THE APPRENTICE
GORGEOUS GARDENS
Canon professional garden photographer Clive Nichols gives our PhotoPlus reader a flowers macro masterclass at RHS Wisley
FACTFILE
Gardeners’ world
RHS WISLEY GARDENS
THE ROYAL Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity that enriches everyone’s life through plants and makes the UK a greener, more beautiful place. Located off the M25 near Woking, RHS Wisley is one of the world’s great gardens; it’s packed with horticultural inspiration such as the Glasshouse, a cathedral-like greenhouse housing world-class tender plant collections. www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley
APPRENTICE
NAME:
MATTHEW FARRUGIA
CAMERA:
CANON EOS R7
MATTHEW is an optician from Peterborough who loves to get out and about with his newly acquired Canon EOS R7 APS-C mirrorless camera. He’s an amateur natural world photographer and loves shooting wildlife as well as close-ups with his macro lens. He asked for help to expand his knowledge of other natural world subjects such as gardens, plants and flowers so we arranged for him to spend the day with Canon pro garden photographer, Clive Nichols, at RHS Wisley.
CANON PRO
NAME:
CLIVE NICHOLS
CAMERA:
CANON EOS 5DS R
CLIVE IS Britain’s best garden photographer and author of the recently published book, Brilliant English Gardens. He also runs workshops on plant and garden photography across the UK in locations including RHS Wisley where we met up with him for our photoshoot. His clients include magazines such as Country Life, The English Garden, Gardens Illustrated and House & Garden. Clive was the Gordon Rae Photographer of the Year in 2017. For more information go to www.clivenichols.com
TECHNIQUE ASSESSMENT
Using the Av mode, set the aperture, and ISO, and let the semi-automatic setting do the work
APERTURE PRIORITY
TO BEGIN, Clive put Matthew’s Canon EOS R7 into its Aperture priority mode (Av on the mode dial). The aperture is a hole made up by a series of blades inside of the lens and Av mode allows you to make the aperture larger or smaller to let in more or less light. This also affects your depth of field and how much of the scene is in sharp focus. As a semi-automatic mode you set the aperture, and the ISO, leaving the camera to work out the correct shutter speed for you to achieve a perfect exposure.
CHECK HISTOGRAMS
THE HISTOGRAM is a useful graph that shows you all of the tones present in your images from deep blacks on the left to bright highlights on the right, and midtones in the middle. The histogram can be activated on your Canon EOS either while composing in Live View, or when playing images back after you’ve taken them. Be sure to check your histogram so that the tones are evenly spread out and not bunched up to one side as this means your image will be over or underexposed and some exposure information is likely to be lost.