Creative tips to capture a summer flower field.

Summertime is filled with fields of flowers. Whether you are visiting a local flower farm, a botanical garden, along a highway, or in the mountains, there are opportunities to capture a large group of flowers. Often the wind is blowing, or insects are moving the flowers around. Try these two creative shooting methods to capture the scene’s beauty and then post-process them in Photoshop or a similar layering program. 

First method: Use intentional camera movement to capture the beauty of the field. Take your F stop to F16 - F22 and make small movements with the camera as you press the shutter. If you are new to ICM photography, check out my other post. The smaller the movement, the more detail you can retain in the scene. The larger the movement, the blurrier the scene gets. You will want to take lots of images to get one you like. I like to take one photo with only slight movement and then take an image with larger movement. Then in post-processing, you can combine the images to create an impressionistic and creative image. 

Second method: Use intentional blurring to capture the scene. Take a standard shot of the scene as your first image. Then take your camera out of focus ( flip to manual focus on your lens or in-camera settings) and take the second image. Then, post-processing combines the photos and blends them using the opacity sliders. This is a way to add some softness to the scene and light. 

This video will walk you through how I edited these images to get this creative, impressionistic look. I hope you will try these methods next time you run across a gorgeous field of flowers.