How do you photograph your trees?

Both the quantity and quality of my trees have increased greatly this past year. After accumulating a lot of knowledge from this forum and other people my trees have begun developing a lot better too. I'm trying to document my trees for progressions but I have a lot of difficulty photographing them and capturing depth.

How do you guys photograph your trees? Any lighting tips?

I have it written-up on my website - http://www.growingbonsai.net/taking-pictures-of-bonsai/

Good article leatherback, plus more theory http://www.artofbonsai.org/tutorials/photoguide.php ...for deeper insight.

petegreg said:

Good article

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Very good article on artofbonsai!

I set them on my dirty bench,whip out my phone and capture the image.

I consider taking clear and regular pictures of your trees to be an extremely important part of bonsai. But it can be a pain sometimes.

I am not a good photographer and I have some large trees, so I've been taking a practical approach lately. I just hang an inexpensive retractable projector screen from the fence. This allows me to photograph very large trees and to take advantage of outdoor lighting. I avoid taking pictures in direct sun due to shadows. When not in use the screen hangs in the garage.

The white background is not the most aesthetically appealing, but it is clean. For publication quality photographs, I will leave that to pros like bnut user f1pt4.

I use a pull down shade, have both off white and black. I am not all that great at photography, but the few things that I've tried that have worked have been tips from several here on the forum. Set your camera to aperture priority, and try out different settings to see how the field of depth changes with that setting. Stand far away from your tree, and zoom in. Crop the rest out.

With a camera

Also choose the smallest pre-set area for focusing not to confuse the measuring system with the object behind the tree. Focus on the trunk.

I use my phone. It easier than using my computer and having to go through a imaging host like photobucket or flickr

Rick

RickMartin said:

I use my phone. It easier than using my computer and having to go through a imaging host like photobucket or flickr

Rick

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My camera has a nice wifi connectivity and sending pictures to phone is very fast and comfortable. Then there's a couple of free and simple applications for easy corrections and postprocessing. ...surfing web usually with my phone. I use a table computer rarely.

RickMartin said:

I use my phone. It easier than using my computer and having to go through a imaging host like photobucket or flickr

Rick

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Me too. In the past, I equipped myself with some film cameras: Nikon FM2, Nikon F3, then Leica M 6 ( I tended getting Hasselblad too, but luckily I stopped! ). Later on, my brother gave me the digital cameras Nikon, Canon. I like them for a while but now I purely use Iphone for taking pictures. It is so easy! It is very light for travel outside and in the yard. The quality of the pictures is not bad for my purpose. All of my cameras is in the cabinet and will become the antique items in the future!
Bonhe

I like to take selfies.

In the nude

My cell phone has a better camera in it than my real camera so I use that then crop it.

I clip an old flat bed sheet to the rain gutter on my house and then drape it over a table (Black and Decker WorkMate usually). I put a stone floor tile (atop the sheet) on the table and my tree on that. The photo can be pretty close to studio-like and with the right color sheet, the background is easily eliminated if you want to Photoshop it onto different backgrounds.

Capturing depth can be a problem, though, and often isn't really what you want. Apparent depth in a photo is actually slightly out of focus foreground and background with sharp focus in between. You need to shoot with as big an aperture as you can and be fairly close to the subject which in turn leads to aspect distortions. Bonsai usually photograph best with a large depth of focus which means being fairly far away and using a small aperture, but this makes the tree appear more two-dimensional unless you've done a great job of building perspective into your design. Depth branches are thin and tapering with small foliage pads; front branches are heavy with relatively little taper (possibly even a touch reverse) and have larger foliage pads. I have been noticing that I have been neglecting this in the development on my collection. It does affect the impact of a tree in person; a photo just exaggerates the lack of perspective in the tree's design (I keep having to remind myself ).