In this tutorial, wildlife photographer Angie Birmingham demonstrates how to capture vivid flower images at the Castroville Poppy House in Texas. She walks viewers through on‑site shooting with two Sony lenses (70‑200mm f/4 with a macro switch and 24‑105mm f/4), comparing macro and standard modes, and showing how aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and focal length affect depth of field, motion blur, and background separation. She illustrates wide‑angle landscape shots, telephoto close‑ups, and back‑lit compositions, emphasizing low‑angle positioning and focus point placement. Throughout, she explains practical settings for windy conditions, noise performance tests across ISO values, and offers creative tips such as choosing apertures for dreamy versus fully‑in‑focus looks. The video concludes with a call to action to shoot, have fun, and links to an editing tutorial.
Chapters
I have been a wildlife photographer for many years, and flowers, believe it or not, are one of my favorite subjects. It may seem like a flower is an easy target because it won't run off like a cheetah, but photographing flowers has its own challenges, and today I'm going to share with you my top tips to help you get better images. So let's head on over to the Poppy House where we can get some red poppies. It's a really, really cool place, and if you're ever in Texas around the San Antonio area, you need to come and visit it. Well, we have arrived at the Poppy House, so let's go on in and start taking some photos of these beautiful poppies. We are going to do some landscapes at different apertures. To show you the depth of field, along with some flower close-ups to show you the depth of field. So let's go on in here and get started. So we just arrived at the Castroville Poppy House. This here is on the property. It is private property, and you have to pay admission to get in, but it's definitely a beautiful place to stop in Texas. This was the old original residence, and And out here you got all the poppies. So while we're out here, I'm going to do a couple macro shots. We're gonna do wide-angle shot, and we're also going to do a telephoto shot. So I'm gonna try to video myself doing it, but it might be a little difficult, so hang tight. All right, so here is our subject, and we're going to be using the Sony 70-200mm lens, f/4, with the new macro button right here. With the flip of a switch, it changes to macro. Flip it back, it's back to a standard lens. Isn't that pretty cool? And the other lens I brought today is the Sony 24-105mm G lens, f/4. Alright, so let's go ahead and first up we're going to do 24-105mm. We're gonna get a wide-angle shot of the flag over there with some poppies in the foreground. All right, so for the wide-angle shot with the poppies in the foreground, we're gonna be at 1/320th second. We're gonna be at 1/320th second shutter speed, f/13, and the ISO is gonna be 2,500. And the shutter is that high because we have wind today. So let's take this shot. All right, so let's take a look at what we got. All right. Here we got a nice wide-angle shot where everything is considered exceptionally sharp. All right, so now we are going to do a macro shot with the Sony 70-200mm f/4 lens. All right, so let's see what our settings are going to be. Okay, so our shutter speed is— all right, let's take a look at our shot now. Just love how the background is separated from that beautiful red poppy. Here we got The macro setup. We're going to shoot this at 1/500th of a second, f/4, and ISO 250. I'm going to do one in macro mode and one in standard lens mode from the same spot, same settings, so you can see the difference between the 2 shots. All right, let's take a look at these. All right, so here they are, and they are also backlit, which is one of my favorite ways to photograph. So when you're out doing wildlife photography, one of my tips is to always get down low. Get low down with your subjects. How low can you go? I can go pretty darn low. How about you? Me and Clickin' Claire here in the background are going to do some photographs, and we're going to explore the different f-stops focusing on the same location to show you the depth of field comparison to the lenses. All right, let's take a look at some images. Okay, so here we've got the Sony 70-200mm f/4 in standard mode and macro mode on the same image. As you can tell, the standard mode has just a little bit more in focus than the macro mode, but it's not a lot, and I don't know if you can tell that out there in YouTube world. So same on this one, we got the macro mode on top, And we got the standard mode on the bottom. And once again, the standard mode has just a little bit more in focus. And here we go, we've got the f/22 macro mode on top, standard mode on the bottom. And as you can see, that the flower is completely in focus on both of them, along with the background. You can make that out, you can make out the background a little bit more in the standard mode than the macro mode. So that's pretty much the difference between standard and macro mode. I would prefer to shoot this lens in standard mode because when you're shooting it in macro mode, you have to get very close to your subject, and I really enjoy photographing bees and butterflies, and when you're in macro mode, you've got to get real close to them, but when you're in standard mode, you have infinity as your focus. Okay, let's jump on over now to the 25-105 images and see what those look like. So you can see here I've got f/4, f/8, and f/22 up on the screen, and you can pretty much tell that the only real difference is the background. Everything else is pretty much in focus, and that's a natural characteristic of a wide-angle lens. And here we've got some wide-angle aperture examples. Here's f/4, and then we got f/8, and then here we've got f/22. Was focused on the wagon wheel halfway through the frame to get most of it in focus. And here's a few of my favorite shots from the Poppy House. Isn't that just gorgeous? And here's my favorite backlit photo and my favorite landscape photo. All right, so don't run off quite yet. We got a couple more things to go over, so let's get started on the Tips. Don't forget to screen snapshot these so you can save them for later. So when you're choosing your shutter speed, keep 2 things in mind. Number one, your focal length. If you are shooting at, say, 70mm like I was doing, I know that I would need to be at 1/60th of a second or higher. I mean, 1/100th would probably be, probably even be better, but if there's no wind, that's what I can shoot at. The other thing to keep in mind is the wind conditions. With little or no wind, you could be at 1/60th of a second. You could even be slower if you wanted to and put it on a tripod. But in windy conditions, you've really got to be at 1/250th of a second or higher. At least that's from what my experience is, but I live in also a very windy condition area. And another one before you move on is always check your images on the back of your camera or through your viewfinder to make sure that you are getting sharp images before you move on to the next subject. All right, so aperture. You are going to choose your aperture, which is your depth of field, for the feeling that you want to portray in your image. If you want a nice dreamy image with only a small section of that flower in focus, then choose a large aperture like f/2.8. But if you're wanting to have all of the flower, or most of the flower, in focus, and a nice buttery background, then maybe use f/5.6 or smaller. Try f/8, f/10. You get the point. And then, if you are wanting a landscape image, focus about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through your scene at f/8 or f/10, and repeat it at different f-stops and different spots in your landscape to ensure that you will go home with a great image. Now don't forget about the ISO. ISO will adjust the brightness of your image, but be careful because it can get too grainy if you turn it up too high. So think of your ISO as a dial on the radio. You turn it up to get it brighter, but the more you turn it up, the grainier it gets. So most cameras have a native ISO of 100. Which is where you want to be at in a perfect world. But, you know, we don't live in a perfect world, so you're going to have to turn that ISO up. And most cameras can handle up to about 800 ISO without any issues. Some of the newer cameras can probably even go up to 2,000 without an issue. I have done a test on my camera to see how far I can push it, and there's a little example there on the screen. I photographed a static item at 100 ISO. 640, 2000, 12:8, and 25:6 to see how well my camera would handle the noise, and that's what I came up with. All right, now for your most important tip of all: go out, shoot, have fun, and go out, get out into nature, and enjoy life to the fullest. Life's too short to stay inside. So don't forget to like and subscribe and do all that crazy stuff. And watch this video right here, and you'll learn how to edit those flowers.
