The Goodman’s Blog: Lifelong Learning and Sharing

She was a participant in an annual parade in Singapore called Chingay, held during the Chinese New Year period. Her dress and hat were full of flowers.

She was sandwiched in a group of 50 other participants. Instead of shooting her with the others, I approached her and asked if she could step out of the group and I then asked her to pose alone.

While I was “directing” her poses, many other event photographers rushed to my photoshoot location and started snapping her. I was fortunate, though, that she only took instructions from me and gamely posed.

I’m so lucky.

This was taken at Keukenhof (Holland) during one of my four trips there this May. I liked the way the tulip heads bowed as the wind blew. The formation also followed a curve of red and green, broken up by the solitary tulip on the bottom left of center.

Amateurs tend to shoot flowers only when they are still and there is no wind. Sometimes, a better photo can emerge when the flowers are swaying to the wind. It is difficult to do this with a handheld camera, as you have to set the shutter speed to a slower time, to show a bit of motion blur.

Amateurs tend to shoot flowers, top down. You should also consider stooping down or kneeling. There’s another world underneath, which can be just as beautiful as the top-view.

I often carry a tripod when shooting flowers, to minimize photo-blur.

Once I have downloaded the photo to my computer, I then re-composed the shot by cropping, to produce a better composition. Whenever I can, I follow the “rule-of-thirds.”