Subscribe To This Site

How to Take a Blurred Background Flower Picture

When you photograph a flower with a blurred background, you capture a piece of nature's beauty....

Walking through a garden, you suddenly see a perfect flower, practically begging you to photograph it. However, capturing it's beauty and getting the perfect shot is not as easy as it appears. Despite all your efforts, the rest of the garden is still in focus, cluttering the picture behind the flower.

Getting the perfect background may be frustrating if you don't know the techniques for photographing blurry backgrounds on flowers.

What is a blurred background?

Basically it's called shallow DOF (depth of field) when the subject is in focus and the back ground is blurry and out of focus. The depth of field tells you how much of your photograph is in focus. Usually one element of the photo remains very sharp, while the other elements are blurred.

Why would you want a blurry background in a flower photo?

The blur in a flower photograph creates a beautiful soft background effect. The shallow DOF isolates the subject. It draws attention to the beauty of the flower in the photograph. By reducing background clutter, it gets rid of any distractions behind the flower. A blurred background really makes the subject pop out.

Why is shallow depth of field difficult?

You may unintentionally get this effect when taking everyday photos, but in order to achieve this effect on purpose, you'll need to know how to adjust the settings on your camera. How easily this is done depends on your camera, whether it is a point and shoot or SLR and what camera model or lens you have.

Depth of field is affected by:

Aperture
Distance from the subject
Focal length of lens
Distance of background

How to blur the background of a flower photo.

Set a wide aperture. The wider the aperture, the shallower
the DOF.
Aperture measures the width of the opening inside the camera lens. The lower the f-stop, the wider the aperture. Lower apertures allow more light to enter the camera with a faster shutter speed. This in turn creates shallow depth of field, blurring the area in front of and behind the subject.
An aperture of 2.8 or even lower is almost certain to create very shallow depth of field. You can use numbers slightly higher, depending on the effect you are trying to achieve.
Get very close to your flower. The closer you are, the shallower the DOF.

You will probably need to use the Macro setting on your point and shoot camera. This tells the camera to focus on a close object. On an SLR camera, you may need a special macro lens in order to get a close up of a flower.

Zoom in. The more you are zoomed in on the flower, the shallower the DOF.
Use a zoom lens and zoom in to the maximum setting. Zooming pushes the background further away from the flower.

Keep the background further away. Compose the photograph with any objects in the background as far away as possible. Closer objects are more likely to be in the same focal area as the flower you are photographing. Things that are far away will be more blurry.
This may be difficult to do when shooting flowers that are growing close together. If you really want the flower separate, you may have to pick it and move it to a better location.

Tips for a Point and Shoot Camera

The blurred background effect is difficult to achieve on a point and shoot because the settings are usually not adjustable.

You best bet is to use the Aperture Priority (Av) mode if it has one. AV is a semi-automatic mode that allows you to control the aperture, while the camera adjusts the shutter speed, keeping your photos well exposed.

If AV mode isn't available, use the Macro mode, which has preset settings for photographing small objects.

Tips for an SLR

Get a macro prime lens. A lens like the 100mm Macro will create beautiful close up photos of flowers.

Use a fast lens. Basically this is a lens that has a very wide aperture. I have a 50mm 1.8 Canon lens for my Rebel xTi. Though it doesn't have macro, it creates a lovely depth of field for flowers and other subjects. This lens is one of the most inexpensive SLR lenses to be had, and is well worth adding to your kit.

If all else fails, Photoshop it.

You can create a blurred background for your flower in Photoshop. Here are the basic steps for creating a blurry background in Photoshop:

1. Duplicate Layer.

2. Select the background.

3. Feather the edges of the selection.

4. Apply the Gaussian Blur Filter.

This isn't always as simple as it sounds, and it is difficult to make the background look authentic. But you can give it a try if your flower pictures don't turn out how you anticipated.

A perfect background isn't always easy.

But if you do see a beautiful flower, working with the focal length, aperture, and distances will help you get the flower photo with a blurred background that you envision.

Share your blurred background flower picture today! Click here now...