15 Garden Photography Ideas and Tips

Whether you want to document your garden transformation progress, post the nature photos showcasing the beauty of your yard on Facebook, print a few pictures for an album, make canvas for hanging on the wall, read thoroughly about these garden photography ideas to gain inspiration, and get fantastic results.

You can conduct a photoshoot not only in your home garden, but also in your local botanical gardens, the variety of flowers and plants of which are simply amazing.

1. Choose Versatile Subjects to Shoot in The Garden

choose subject for garden photography

Use a professional camera for macro photography to capture the beauty of shrubs, plants, vegetables, herbs, various architecture types arranged on your landscape.

Inspect the garden walls, fence, and the garden floor looking for mushrooms, for example, which can be well-hidden in the pile of leaves. Lichens and moss, or any other natural part of your garden, which supports healthy condition of soil, can also complement the composition.

2. Focus on Complementary Colors

complementary colors garden photography

The affluence of natural shades of your garden is impressive, and the task of any photographer is to mix them smartly. Use complementary colors like red, blue or pink to get a brilliant shot.

3. Photograph Garden Plants from Their Level

plant level garden photography

While conducting gardening photoshoot, it would be great to highlight some characteristic and beauty of plants. You need to bend down to shoot flowers or other greenery from this level. Such a position ensures a perfect perspective and allows focusing on the object of your photoshoot eliminating the distractions around.

Note that such type of shooting may result in image with dull colors but these “defects” are easy to correct using Photoshop at post-production stage.

4. Follow Composition Rules in Garden Photography

composition rules garden photography

The classic rule of thirds is the most common one. According to it, a photographer should bring a focus on the desired point in either the intersections or a whole line of a 3×3 grid to get a stunning and eye-grabbing composition.

Following leading lines technique is perfect for garden photoshoots as well. It requires arranging the lines in the frame in a way that they induce a viewer’s glance fall on the needed point.

fixthephoto garden photo editing before after fixthephoto garden photo editing before after

Want Your Garden Photos to Stand Out?

Any type of photography, including garden shots, requires high-quality editing to look perfect. So, addressing professional retouchers is a good decision.

Our experts will create a cohesive style of your photos, eliminate glare and fix background defects.

5. Frame the Shot with Natural Garden Frames

frames garden photography

Using natural garden lines like paths, fences, and even stone lines to create a natural frame for your shot is one of the greatest garden photography ideas. Take your camera for landscape photography and look through the lens to detect the elements that can serve as a frame for your objects. These can be virtually any things or plants like trees, bushes and even holes between plants.

6. Use a Reflector to Avoid Lens Flares in the Garden

use a reflector garden photography

A reflector is an affordable accessory that allows smoothening the hard shadows. Use a reflector in photography by positioning it between the light source and your subject. Like an umbrella it will block direct light creating a perfect illumination for your shots.

Install this accessory when shooting in backlight to minimize the lens flare. Choosing the right size of a reflector is an important task as well. Make sure that you can comfortably hold it for a long time or attach it to a tripod and use the shutter timer release for a more convenience.

7. Take Advantage from Tripod

tripod in garden photography

Portable tripod is a versatile tool for garden photography. With its help, you can also shoot hilarious timelapse videos. Besides, this accessory is the most reliable piece of equipment for stabilizing your camera getting crisp and clear images.

Using a tripod for DSLR with fast shutter speed, your photos will look stunning even in a windy weather.

8. Choose Macro Lens for Detailed Garden Shot

garden photography macro

Macro lenses are indispensable camera accessories for shooting close-up pics that allow showcasing flowers and leaves in all their beauty. With them, you can realize all your creative garden photography ideas.

35mm 1.8 Macro lenses are one of the most optimal variants. Macro shots will let you reveal all the details, which an average person wouldn`t notice, and amaze viewers with stunning textures.

9. Take a Photo of an Insect

garden photography insects

Insect photography is great for telling the story of your garden. Do not only focus on an insect but include some other element into a composition.

These can be a few leaves, for example. The possible scenarios you can capture are a bee pollinating a flower, a butterfly savoring the nectar from flowers or even bugs hunting for their prey.

10. Try All Season Shooting

garden photography all seasons

Spring, summer and autumn are the most optimal seasons for photographing a garden landscape. These times of the year is known for the abundance of colors scattered around in the form of flowers and leaves.

However, even in winter it is possible to conduct a stunning gardening photoshoot. This season allows capturing how plants are getting ready for spring and summer. The unique lens flare will enhance such images.

11. Look for Patterns

garden photography pattern

Very often, photographers want to demonstrate a specific part of their garden with flowers, foliage or vegetables. To capture this type of landscape, they need to get closer to the required patch and take a shot.

However, the things are not so simple. To make you photo look more original, try to find the repetitive natural pattern and include it to the frame. If you fail to take a perfect shot from the first time, you can use crop image in Photoshop then.

12. Include Working Hands into the Shot

garden photography with arm

Images featuring hands doing some type of gardening jobs is one of the most creative photography ideas for your gardening photoshoot. You can plant flowers, hold the harvest, water plant, etc. Be sure the resulting pics will be amazing!

13. Use a Clean Background to Make Flowers Stand Out

clean background garden photography

When taking flower photography, minimalism is a must. The background should lack any distracting elements, otherwise your photos will look cluttered. It is possible to avoid capturing undesired elements by changing the perspective to focus on flowers. Rearranging the plants is another appropriate solution.

14. Capture Water Droplets

garden photography droplets

Shooting with a wider aperture and at an appropriate angle to create the distance between the droplets and the background is another important condition. Taking pics using these techniques allows increasing background blur, thus creating a mesmerizing bokeh effect!

Conduct a photoshoot under the rain to realize of the most creative garden photo ideas, but be sure to protect your devices with camera rain cover. If you do not want to wait, then you can mimic rain by watering plants from watering can.

15. Don't Forget to Include Props

garden photography garden tools

Look closely at your garden tools, as they can also be the object of your photoshoot. Including a minimalistic set of tools to your composition can cause amazing effect. Add a model to your shot and capture him/her when working in the garden to enliven your pics.

Bonus Tools

garden photography freebies

Garden photography is all about natural colors, so it is advisable to use nature editing service or keep photo unretouched. If you want your photos to look professional, then use ready-made presets. With their help, you can automatically remove unnecessary glare, balance the contrast and brightness of the background and nature, remove dust from the leaves and make insects clearer.

Contents:
SAVE UP TO 60% OFF SAVE UP TO 60% OFF