Spring garden and deck details: close-ups in your own backyard

You don’t need to drive anywhere for good nature photography in spring. Between September and November, a typical New Zealand backyard is busy with blossom, insects, birds and fresh growth, and the deck you walk across every morning turns out to be one of the best macro subjects you own. The light is kinder than in high summer too, with lower sun angles for much of the day and plenty of soft, cloudy mornings.

Here’s how the Hellophoto team works a small patch of garden over a spring weekend.

Gear: keep it simple

A macro lens if you have one, but close-up filters, extension tubes or a phone with a macro mode all work. Our post on macro on a budget covers the cheap options.
A small reflector or a sheet of white card to bounce light into shadows.
A spray bottle, for when the dew has burnt off and you still want droplets. Use it gently and honestly: it’s a prop, not a nature record.
A kneeling mat. Your knees will thank you.

Blossom and flowers

Spring flowers are the obvious starting point, and the trick is to make them look like more than a seed catalogue.

Get low and shoot through foreground petals for a soft wash of colour in front of the subject.
Backlight translucent petals. Early or late in the day, put the sun behind a flower and it glows. Watch for flare and use your hand to shade the lens.
Simplify the background. Move a few centimetres left or right until the background is an even blur of green or sky, not a fence and the wheelie bin.
Use a wide aperture, then check depth of field. At macro distances, even f/8 gives a very thin slice of sharpness. Pick one point, often the stamens, and make that sharp.

If you have a kōwhai nearby, spring is its moment. Flowering is staggered across late winter and spring depending on the tree, and tūī will often arrive to feed on the nectar. Sit still with a longer lens and let them settle.

Bees and other insects

Spring brings bees back into the garden in numbers. Many of the bees you’ll see are introduced honey bees and bumblebees, but New Zealand also has around 28 native bee species. They’re small, mostly solitary, and many nest in the ground, so they’re easy to overlook. If you spot a bee noticeably smaller than a honey bee working a flower, it may well be a native.

Tips for insects:

Work early in the morning. Insects are slower when it’s cool, which makes them easier to photograph.
Pre-focus and wait. Set focus on a flower that’s getting visits and let the bees come to you, rather than chasing them.
Use a fast shutter speed, 1/1000 second or faster, for bees in flight. Wings will still blur a little, which looks natural. Raise ISO to get there.
Keep your distance. Bees on flowers are generally focused on feeding, but give them room and avoid blocking the entrance to any hive or nest, including the small ground nests of native and solitary bees.

Dew on the deck

Dew forms on clear, calm nights when surfaces cool down, so a still spring morning after a starry night is your best chance. Get outside before the sun reaches the deck; once it does, the droplets disappear quickly.

Shoot low across the boards so the droplets catch the light and the grain recedes into soft focus.
Look for droplets on the edges and in the grooves, where they sit in neat lines.
Find reflections. A bead of water can hold a tiny upside-down image of the garden or sky behind it. Get very close, focus on the droplet and choose the background carefully.
Spider webs between the railings and the plants are spectacular with dew. Backlight them for sparkle.

Oiled versus grey timber

Decks make great texture subjects, and the contrast between freshly oiled and weathered timber tells a story on its own.

Untreated timber left in the weather gradually turns silver-grey. Sunlight breaks down the material that binds the surface fibres together, rain washes it away, and the pale fibres left behind give that weathered look. It’s a surface effect, so a fresh coat of oil shows the warmer colour of the wood again.

Photo ideas:

The halfway line. If someone in the house is oiling the deck over a weekend, photograph the boundary between oiled and grey boards. Low raking light shows the difference in texture as well as colour.
Grain close-ups. Weathered boards have raised grain and fine cracks that look wonderful in side light. Our post on timber textures up close has more on raking light and detail.
Wet versus dry. Rain or dew darkens grey timber and briefly brings back some colour. Shoot the same board wet and dry for a pair.

Set white balance carefully on timber. Auto settings often neutralise the warm tones you’re trying to show. A daylight preset, or a grey card in the first frame, keeps the colour honest.

Birds in the garden

Spring is nesting season for many garden birds, native and introduced. Enjoy watching, but keep well back from nests, don’t trim the hedge they’re using just to get a clear view, and avoid flash near nests. DOC’s guide to native birds is handy for identifying visitors, and you might be surprised what turns up in a suburban garden.

Make it a project

Pick one small area, maybe a single flower bed, one corner of the deck and a nearby tree, and photograph it every week through spring. You’ll catch blossom opening and falling, insects arriving, new leaves unfolding and the deck slowly changing. By December you’ll have a set that shows the season far better than any single frame. And when you’ve finally exhausted the backyard, which may take longer than you think, the wider world is still out there.