We’re enjoying the weather while we can, great to be able to sit out in the garden on a very warm and sunny August day. I just wish we had more of these kind of days in the UK. Hazel is a keen gardener and has certainly got green fingers. So while I sat in garden I thought I would capture some of the wonderful colours we have around us, hope you enjoy them too.

Making sure the light is coming from a direction other than from your camera position provides more interesting image, otherwise it can appear somewhat flat, which isn’t particularly appealing. A good rule of thumb is having the sun at between 45 – 80 degrees to your camera position and the subject you are photographing.

Get an interesting composition, I prefer close up shots myself as you can see. Using a shallow depth of field helps to blur the background, I was using f5.6 for this shot. This isn’t a macro lens so I couldn’t get particularly close to the flowers and achieve focus, but I used the zoom to fill the frame more.

I would love to know which image you prefer and why