Presentation: How to photograph plants (and more), by Lena Struwe and Peter Nitzsche

So much of documentation of biodiversity and educational projects today include digital images, but how do you take good photos of plants and features associated with plants (such as insects and diseases) for easy and secure species identification?  And how do you teach your students this skill? This is not about taking beautiful, artsy photos, but how to take photos that contain as much species information as possible so that you can document the characteristics of the species in the most efficient way and share your information with experts and others.

We are here sharing the slides from a webinar series developed by Lena Struwe and Peter Nitzsche at Rutgers University.  We have made a selection of the slides, and hope that even if they do not include extensive text or audio that they will be helpful to you.  You are welcome to use all or some of these slides in your teaching, as long as you give the authors credit and don’t modify the slides.

The 79 slides cover these topics: Equipment, basic photographic knowledge (f-stop, light, ISO, speed), depth of field, scale, digital zoom, optical zoom, focus, plant parts to photograph, how to get help with species ID, online ID resources, macrophotography, photographing plant problems and arthropods, etc.

Download the presentation slides below in pdf format to use in your classes or for your own review.  We encourage you to download and use the slides so they fit your own learning goals in your teaching.