Kwinana Rockingham Mandurah Branch, 17 March 2025

Sophie Xiang was the speaker for our March General Meeting. Her topic was Wildflower Photography using smartphones. Sophie has built up quite a following on social media for her wildflower photographs, and she is regularly asked to deliver workshops on the topic at regional wildflower events. Such workshops typically last three hours, so she delivered a condensed version for our meeting.

She started by saying that her mindset was to use photography to build her knowledge of wildflowers through observation. She said the photographer should become a naturalist and invite all in by appreciating insects, birds, other fauna, raindrops, and wildflowers. She explained how you can use photography to follow a plant’s lifecycle.

She described the key factors in photography:

Lighting

For lighting, she discussed soft and harsh lighting, with harsh lighting encountered in broad daylight, while soft lighting is found during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset and is generally favoured by photographers.

Subject Matter

For subject matter, the photographer should pay attention to the flower condition, choose flowers without imperfections where feasible, look for shapes and patterns, colour symmetry and use composition tools to produce memorable images.

Composition

The choice of perspective is also important. Explore different perspectives; images taken from different angles can give greater detail and clarity. She illustrated this point using some images of Banksia flowers taken directly above rather than from the side.

Editing

She then discussed knowing your phone’s camera, explaining that recent models have multiple lens options for capturing wide-angle, normal, and telephoto images, plus macro settings useful for flora and insects. Turning the phone upside down can also create an interesting perspective, allowing the photographer to capture images taken from ground level.

She then spent some time having audience members take out their phones and explain certain features to them, which was very educational for many. It was a very interesting presentation, and the audience members expressed their gratitude to Sophie for sharing her knowledge.

For those not familiar with Sophie’s wildflower photographs, be sure to check out her images on Instagram at @Sophie_wildflowers_photography.

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Colin Prickett