Mastering Flower Photography: The Forget-Me-Not Guide

Always colourful, always elegant—here’s how I like to photograph the forget-me-not flowers.

Blooming for a short period of time in the Spring season (mid-late May), these forget-me-not flowers are good reminders that Spring is well under way.

The delicate flowers can be found bunched up at ground level in many shaded areas of your local park. You can easily find them in heavily forested areas or even along sides of the roads and waterways.

Compositional Problems

Having them bunched together on the ground, though, poses a compositional problem. While you can take photos of them together, there’s only so much you can do with them.

Here’s a couple of compositions I tried of a bunch of forget-me-not flowers.

Filling the entire frame with the flowers can be a great way to express the abundance of these flowers. I shot this from directly above the flowers, pointing down so that I can have the majority of flowers in focus.

Here’s another one where I noticed a dead tree trunk laying in the middle of a bunch of forget-me-not flowers. The first photo is framed so one side is full of flowers and the other side is bare. The contrast created by the tree trunk is what I found interesting. (click to enlarge)

Isolation creates the subject

Because the top-down photos prioritizes seeing as many of the flowers at once, it makes it more difficult to appreciate them individually.

To create a more impactful image, I isolate the flowers, guiding our eye directly to the intended subject.

We can do this in a few steps:

1. Get down low to the ground at the same level as the flowers themselves.
   • This does one thing: Brings the viewers into the image, seeing things as if we were right there with the subject matter (the flowers)
2. Find a clean background that doesn’t take our attention away from the subject.
   • Do this by looking at the subject at ground-level and moving the camera from side to side, and up and down. This allows you to see exactly what you’ll be taking a photo of.
   • Use your flip-up LCD screen to help you with this if you don’t want to shoot with your stomach on the ground.
3. In my case, I found flowers that were backed by the setting sun. I framed it so the trees were directly behind the flowers with the sun setting behind the trees.
   • This composition does one thing: The sunlight is broken down by the leaves of the trees, before reaching the camera. With the light breeze that day, these leaves were gently blowing from side to side, creating subtle light movements directly behind the flowers.
4. Choose your lenses wisely.
   • I used my Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena lens to create the most mesmerizing bokeh (blur) behind the subject. This lens works wonders this way.
   • I also used my Z MC 105mm f/2.8 S (macro) lens to get even closer to the flowers, allowing me to capture more of the details while still capturing a magical bokeh.
   • If you don’t have these lenses, use whatever lens you have—at the longest focal length—and open your aperture wide to get a shallow depth of field.

To portrait or to landscape?

For these forget-me-not flowers, both portrait and landscape orientation works well depending on how you look at them.

Typically for longer subject matters like flowers with their stems or trees, a portrait orientation works well as it allows the eye to follow the entirety of the subject from the ground up.

But if you move further away and include the surrounding environment, a landscape version can also work to showcase the context as to where the flower is in.

Choosing an effective background

Choosing your background is equally important as which flower you’re focusing on. A busy background will distract our attention away from the beauty of the flower.

With a cleaner background, our focus goes right toward the intended subject, letting you appreciate the intricacies of the flower.

During one of my outings, I noticed the sun setting directly behind a set of forget-me-not flowers. To take advantage of my situation, I went straight to the ground, tilted my camera up a little to include the beautiful orange hues the sun was giving off that day. Using my Plena and Macro lens, I was able to come out with some striking images. (click to enlarge)

Final Thoughts

They don’t scream look at me, nor are they up in your face at any time—these flowers quietly bloom on the forest floor bringing colour and joy to anyone who notices them. By paying attention to their surroundings and keeping in mind the background, you too can take photos that allow you to better appreciate their existence in the world around you.

I encourage you to find these flowers, use whatever lens you have, and try out different compositions that best highlight the beauty of your subject. You’ll be surprised at what you come up with!

In-the-field video

You can watch my YouTube video where I explain a few tips while out in the field.

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