Images of roses have wide range of symbolic potential ranging from love to war. In a famous English civil war, the War Of The Roses, each side used a rose as their symbol. Conversely red roses are symbols of love and romance with publisher Mills and Boon using a rose as part of their corporate identity. Red roses are also a favorite gift between lovers on Valentine’s Day. Curiously legendary rock band the Grateful Dead named one of their greatest albums after a rose, American Beauty, with an image of a the rose as the main feature of the cover.
Let’s Look At Basics
You do not need a garden full of roses; due to their popularity, other people will grow them for you. Public parks and gardens are full of a range of roses, and of course, keen home gardeners take pride in displaying their rose growing efforts in the front garden in full view from the street. The disadvantage is the roses have to be photographed in situ, limiting the angles and lighting options available if the bloom could be cut and taken to the studio.
The main interest of the rose plant is the bloom itself, as the rest of the rose plant is generally boring and unattractive. A common composition is to fill the frame with the bloom itself and this means getting in close. Close up photography present a number of challenges mainly to do with focusing and depth of field.
Even wide-angle lenses chosen by landscape photographers to capture every detail of a sweeping vista in sharp focus have a limited depth of field when the subject is very close. Some lenses struggle to focus when moving in close enough to fill the frame with the rose, and a macro lens may be required. Although some normal lenses such as the main lens used for the example photos a Carl Zeiss 35mm Flektogon, are designed to focus closely and can be used instead of a specialist macro lens. The Zeiss can get into about four inches away from the subject and still maintain focus, typical of the performance for good macro lenses of that focal length.
Trying to maximize depth of field results in use of small apertures with the price of slower shutter speeds and increasing the risk of camera shake. Some macro lenses come with optical stabilization and another alternative is cameras with image stabilization technology in the camera body, applicable to all lenses. However it is implemented, image stabilization has one shortcoming in this situation, it does not guard against the photographer swaying and changing the point of focus. In most photography, this may not be important; where depth of field is very narrow the results are significant. A tripod is the solution. However, for public photography using a tripod is not always a practical option.
Exposure
Large flowers such as roses present problems for a camera’s exposure meter when taking close up shots. Surrounding a single bloom are usually darker leaves, stems and shadows. This is good compositionally as the darker background presents framing device for the bloom ensuring the background does not distract from the beauty of the bloom.
This is a high contrast situation and provides a challenge for the camera’s metering systems, typically a matrix or pattern metering system for digital cameras. This often leads to overexposure or blown highlights on the lighter sections of the bloom’s petals. This is where the spot metering mode becomes the preferred option for determining exposure, while another option is using exposure compensation settings so the final exposure is darker than the exposure meter’s initial reading.
If your digital camera is able to display the exposure Histogram on the LCD screen, use this to analyze the shot to see if it needs reshooting with an adjusted exposure setting. The key area on the histogram is the right hand side. Some cameras will display a warning for areas with blown highlights while reviewing the image on the LCD screen.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
