Spring Fever: My 5 Go-to Photo-ops in Full Bloom!

If you live in a humid place, I envy you. Your springtime lasts longer than a week, some of us are not so lucky. Especially when it snows the last week of March (seriously Utah?) but this weekend will be the BEST for snapping a few shots amongst the flowers. That is, until your face swells up from the pollen allergies.

1. Chase Light - Add warmth

I can get into more detail later about how important light is but until then try to find the best light, here are a couple of lighting tricks:

-Backlight: face your subject away from the sun and snap a shot. Backlight is going to add the dreamy effect (and sometimes a halo) to your subject.

-Find a shady area that the shade is distributed evenly

-Shoot during dawn or dusk, this is where warmth comes into play. Many photographers shoot during “magic” hour but since the sun is gone, your photos are going to get cooler naturally so just punch it up a little bit during your post processing.

2. Get your Bokeh on

See how Ryker and Bethany in these pictures are in focus but their background and foreground have a nice ripply texture? That's called bokeh. To achieve this effect: have your subject step away from their background and shoot a bit more wide open then you usually do (your fstop.) If your tree is bigger than 5 feet wide, you can stick your subject right into the flowers to have that all consuming bokeh. For even more fun, stick a flower or piece of glass right in front of your lens in the corner of the frame to add depth. Both of these are shown above in the picture with Bethany.

3. Find COLOR

Spring is all about the COLOR, find colors that pop or are bright or are complimentary and it will make your spring pictures much more pleasing. You can find color in the oddest of places: a wall of a warehouse, an orchard, the side of the freeway seems to grow the prettiest flowers…etc.

4. Document an Activity

Pick flowers, skip in a field, have a tea party, the options are endless.

5.Embrace rain

Nature can be your best friend. It usually isn’t, unless you know how to make it work for you but get a camera protector from water and you'll be golden. A little fear of water is totally holding you back and animals LOVE water so if you want to catch them, you've got to suck it up and go outside on the rainy days.

Lastly, remember to frolic my friends.