JHG Photography

Tulip Festival - 40 years and 200’000 bulbs in Morges 2010 edition

The Fete de la Tulip in Morges is happening every year during March-April, for the last 40 years. Around 100’000 bulbs are seed in the Parc of Independance, where the Morges river is ending in the Geneva lake, next to the Castle. The organisators have seed 200’000 bulbs this year, which is probably one of the largest tulip festival in the world, with dozens of multi color variants. Thousands of people come visiting it every day, and depending of the weather, the flowers can last up to 5 weeks! 

5 Tips to take great and spectacular flower pictures

Taking great pictures of flowers has always been one of the main reason to purchase a camera for many of us! Flower photos in the magazines and on websites always look full of colors, saturated and have a peaceful ambiance. However, when back at home, the results might not be always as expected. You don’t necessarily need an expensive macro lens, actually a zoom with fast aperture can really give dramatic effect (for info, most of the below photos have been taken with Minolta 80-200 HS G f/2.8). Here are a few tips and advises that might help you make the photos looking really gorgeous and spectacular as the 75 pictures of tulips you can see below:

1. Shoot horizontally your flowers: many people I see taking pictures of flowers do it with a vertical angle, standing right in front of it. This gives no perspective to the flowers, and you will have very flat render. You need to get yourself at the same level as the flowers, and shoot on a horizontal perspective your subject, like doing portrait. You might have to be on your knees most of the time, so be prepared and do not wear a white trouser!
2. Arrange the scene to be spectacular with a clean background: have a flower in focus and play around it (rule of third, diagonal…), especially if you have a clean and bright background this will help you a lot to emphasize the scene and glorify it.
3. Play with zoom, DOF and light: you need to masterize the aperture of your lens, which will blur the background and help you realize the tip #2. Macro lens or tele-zoom (starting at 70mm) might really help you here, and to get great perspective don’t hesitate to go up to the maximum of your lens (200-300mm). Make sure your subject (the flower!) is sufficiently lightened so the render will be even more spectacular. Be careful of too bright light, especially on white flowers, it will just burn the petals.
4. Look around you to compose the scene: flowers are beautiful, and most of the time deserve to be the only subject of the photo. However do not forget that what’s around you might also give fantastic scene, where the flower will just be an element that will sublimate the overall picture, being on the first or secondary plan.
5. Do not over saturate the final results: make sure when finalising the render on your computer that the flower colors are not over saturated (red and orange are typically the most sensitive), and that you still have enough details in the the white petals.