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In the floral industry we know how important it is to be able to capture and share your floral designs across multiple digital platforms. Taking photos of your work can seem time consuming and may sometimes be an afterthought of the design process, but keeping up with the digital market means sharing multiple times a week. Learning how to take high quality, relevant, and accurate photos of what you create is essential in maintaining your presence online.
Last year, Kait Day, owner of Winnipeg-based marketing consulting group Nowaday Studios, facilitated a Florists Supply webinar on the basics of smartphone photography. Below are her tips and guidelines to easily capture beautiful floral images on your phone.
Shooting flowers is a unique subject in and of itself! Capturing a full bouquet versus taking a flatlay photo of a few stems require different techniques, backgrounds, and props. Try using a fabric or a plain white background to shoot stems on their own, or grab a friend and have them hold a stem or two against a white background. Take photos of a bouquet from above, or angle towards the camera instead of straight on to capture more of the blooms. You can also experiment with floral flatlay photos by creating a scene with leaves and small flowers with the stems cut off.
The Basics: Your Phone Camera
- Always use your phone camera app – don’t use the in-app cameras
- Remember to tap your screen to focus on your subject
- Clean your camera lens before shooting to avoid haze
- Turn off flash
- Turn off Live
- Don’t use Portrait Mode so that viewers can have a clear sense of everything in the photo
- NEVER screenshot a photo that you’ve taken with your phone camera – this will reduce the quality of the photo
Lighting/Set-Up
- Natural light is the key to good phone photography. Find a window or another source of natural light. Taking photos outside when weather permits is also a good idea
- Make sure your light source is behind or beside you
- Never shoot directly into the sun or a window – always keep the light source behind you
Composition
- Choose your subject
- Make sure your background is clean and simple, and avoid cluttered spaces
- Shoot in bright and light spaces
- Experiment with different camera angles to get the best shots
- Move towards and away from your subject to get different perspective
- Positioning your subject slightly off centre adds visual interest to help engage a viewer
- DO NOT ZOOM – Using your camera to zoom in may warp your subject. Instead, take a step towards your subject if you want it to fill the frame
Editing Apps
Use an editing app and a consistent filter or editing process. Always edit your photos the same way so that you have a consistent look that speaks to your business. Here are some apps we recommend downloading on your phone for editing:
- Lightroom
- VSCO
- Snapseed
Editing Tips
Keeping your florals as true to their natural colour is always the goal in floral photography.
- Apply a filter before you edit. This will give you a better idea of the end result
- Most editing apps have lots of filtering options, but always stick with one or two filters for all your photos
- Start by adjusting brightness and sharpening your image
- Move onto contrast only if needed
- Finally adjust highlights and shadows to enhance the natural light in your photo
- Try not to over edit. Taking your photo in natural light helps prevent the need to do so.
- Avoid changing colour tones
Show us your floral photography by tagging us on Instagram and using the #FSLiving hashtag.
Visit floristssupply.com/events to get information and register for other upcoming webinars.