Photograph the beautiful plants and flowers in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to show off their amazing shapes and forms. Take a minimum of 30 pictures of at least 15 subjects.

To make your photographs visually engaging, use:

  • the rule of thirds
  • figure to ground
  • fill the frame
  • pattern

To isolate the subject from the background, use shallow depth of field.

Put your 30 photos in an album on Flickr. Send your single best photo to the class group.

When photographing with a camera for shallow depth of field:

  • Use Aperture Priority or Av and set the camera to the widest aperture (lowest number.)
  • Use the telephoto end of your lens (zoom in.) 
  • Get close to the subject
  • Allow some distance between the subject and the background. There must be space between the foreground and background of your composition. 

  • Flower Close up with shallow depth of field
  • Flower Close up with shallow depth of field
Remember the focus does not have to be on the subject in the front of the photo!

When photographing with a camera phone:

Because of its very small sensor size, it can be very difficult to get shallow depth of field with a cameraphone. However, the same general approach will work:

  • Zoom in
  • Get close to the subject
  • Allow some distance between the subject and the background. There must be actual space between the foreground and background of your composition.