Photographing flowers

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I like to take photos of my flowers and upload them to GOY and to a Flickr account that I have so I can share them with my family. With over 3000 photos on Flickr, it could be a challenge to go through them. It also allows me to review them at the end of the year and choose which seedlings to keep or toss. But there is a problem of when to photograph them – it the morning before the sun hits them, or later in the day. Here is one I took this morning, before the sun shone in its area:

It is a nice white, but the petals are still trying to open all the way. The second photo is taken 5 hours later, after it has been baking in the sun. The petals are open fully, but the self has turned yellow.
Even if the petals are fully open, exposure to the sun will change the colors:

Then there is the problem of location. I have one area that has a huge tree to the south east, and that blocks the sun until late morning. Then there is another area that gets the sunrise, and it is flooded with sun all day. I don’t get up before sunrise, so it becomes a problem. I have been trying one solution, using an umbrella to block the sun. This makes the photo a little darker than it should be.

The second photo is without the umbrella, which is fine for a solid color, but shadows are included.
Then there is the problem with pattern daylilies and the sun. Today, it is supposed to be a UV factor of 8, which means everything is really going to bake. In the morning with an umbrella and flash:

In the second photo, the colors are saturated and heavy.
It hasn’t helped that there has been a lot of rain and strong winds. The rain didn’t fall heavily, but rather light but steady, so the full sun plants need didn’t happen. I have tried using an umbrella with flash, and sometimes that works; other times, no. Solids do well in full sun:

These new cameras have become so complicated, that all anyone can really do is play with the settings until they find something that works.
I am editing this to include something that seems to work for full sun. I went into my camera’s menu, selected ‘White Balance’ and found various settings for full sun, shade, flash, etc. After selecting full sun, this is what I got for a bright orange flower, Eder sdlg 0054:

The second photo is when I place myself in front of the sun and cast a shadow on it. Having found this, I will be using it more.

• 16 May, 2017
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