How to take good photos of plants...

One of the BEST ways to learn botany (or anything for that matter) is to just go out and start immersing yourself in it, even if you don't yet have a clue as to what the fuck what you're doing.

And to make these experiences count, that's where the importance of photos comes in. And why not? With digital photography you can take a hundred shitty photos in a day and it doesn't matter - if they end up being useless, who cares?

Just delete them. Investing in a good camera, and even more important, a decent lense, was integral to teaching myself about the living world of plants around me - it creates a record of the things I've seen, and I save them on a hard drive, or in a cloud like Google photos, or on inaturalist, and I keep track of all the species I've encountered and also map them (with geotagging enabled).

So below, I'm going to tell you how I go about getting good photos (where everything is in focus, which is important if I'm using photos to help identify and key out species later on) and what parts of plants to get photos of.

My camera: I've found that Canon takes the best photos, but their camera-to-smartphone app and geotagging system sucks, so it's basically useless to me for what I do (because I upload everything to the cloud and to Inaturalist directly from my phone later on). So, I take a very mild hit in image quality and in return get high functionality with the smartphone app AND geotagging by using Nikon.

First off, 95% of DSLR and mirrorless cameras don't have built in gps. It's fucking ridiculous that they dont, because it would be a really easy thing to include, but they don't. So my GPS comes from my smartphone syncing with the camera via an app. This requires staying on top of the sync rate and your phones gps accuracy by using another app called "gps fix" , but it's worth it. That metadata regarding location is invaluable, and I'll often use it for herbarium vouchers I use of a particular species. It is immense helpful.

My camera that I use specifically is a NIKON DSLR d7500. It's a "beginner model" with a built in flash (the pro models don't have this built in flash feature, which sucks bc I don't like using the attachable speedlite flashes which are cumbersome and take time to recharge). D3400 and d3500 are also decent models.

What's more important for me, is the lense. I use the beater 18mm-55mm stock lense that usually comes with the camera, along with an expensive macro lens which is immensely important for the stuff I do regarding taxonomic comparisons of subtle differences in flower structures, trichomes, scales, insects, etc . The lense is an $800avro 105mm lense. I can't overstate its importance. It has been an invaluable tool for my learning. I was a cheap fuck and hesitant to buy it at first, but a friend finally convinced me after giving me much-deserved ridicule. But you don't necessarily need the macro lense to begin with. You just need to learn how to take good pictures, and the key to taking good pictures (at least for taxonomic and diagnostic purposes) is to get good depth of field - this means getting a photo where everything you need to be in focus is actually in focus.

This requires a small aperture, which means the hole that lets light in is smaller. Since less light is let in, you need the built-in flash to compensate. If you're in direct sun, you'll also need to cover the subject with your shadow (or an umbrella or diffusing element) so that the image doesn't come out bleached or too high in contrast.

My typical settings for a good photo are :

Cover the subject with a shadow so the direct sun isn't hitting it (unnecessary of it's overcast out).

Shutter speed : 1/250
Aperture: f22 or higher
Flash (raise flash compensation to make brighter of necessary).

To get REALLY good light, you can even use something like a small diffuser that basically gets wrapped around the lense and diffuses the light that hits the subject, making it much softer and reducing contrast (contrast makes for shitty photos). They can be purchased for 12 bux on crappy Amazon.

If all this is too much and you just want a simple point and shoot, I suggest something like an Olympus th6. They run about $500, have built in gps, a microscope setting for macro photos, a built in flash, and can be fully submerged in water. You won't get photos as good as a Nikon, but they'll certainly be better than a cellphone.