Shoot amazing flower portraits in your garden

Peter Fenech
(Image credit: Future)

Few of us are lucky enough to have extensive grounds attached to our houses. If we have a garden at all, most will be comparatively small. This creates several challenges when trying to shoot professional flower portraits. Firstly there is the question of space - most gardens are box shaped, with little distance between the subject and surrounding wall or fence. 

This makes it difficult to introduce separation using background blur, which is the hallmark of professional photography. This is less of a problem with true macro subjects, due to the ultra shallow depth-of-field, but for large flowers too much distracting detail can remain. Secondly there is a limited choice of lighting angle. At noon in particular there can be almost no shade, resulting in high contrast, low colour saturation and unsightly blown highlights on the flowers.     

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Peter Fenech

As the Editor for  Digital Photographer magazine, Peter is a specialist in camera tutorials and creative projects to help you get the most out of your camera, lens, tripod, filters, gimbal, lighting and other imaging equipment.


After cutting his teeth working in retail for camera specialists like Jessops, he has spent 11 years as a photography journalist and freelance writer – and he is a Getty Images-registered photographer, to boot.


No matter what you want to shoot, Peter can help you sharpen your skills and elevate your ability, whether it’s taking portraits, capturing landscapes, shooting architecture, creating macro and still life, photographing action… he can help you learn and improve.