Generally, with flowers, the best strategy is as per the generally-best approach to photographing people and most other living subjects….

1: try to be in (or very near to) the same horizontal plane as your subject.

2: point the lens straight at its eye/s or “face”.

3: ideally, do this when the sun is low, and behind you –  nicely illuminating the subject rather than turning it into a black silhouette or a mere scatteration of light.

Sometimes, however, the better plan – or at least, something worth trying – is to flout some or all such rules.

This post’s image looks straight down at the top of its subject, in “poor” light, in the middle of a winter day.

One of the pleasures of wintertime walking in Perth’s Kings Park is to encounter some of southwest WA’s greenhood orchids; most of them bloom in winter, and are already “past it” some weeks before WA’s springtime “wildflower season” begins.

Many of my photos of greenhoods are fruits of an entirely “proper” approach.

Still, my favourite of my own greenhoood images is the “wrongheaded” one above, taken in Kings Park at 12.15 pm on the second day of August, 2015; no flash – or other artificial light – was deployed.

And for some of my other “successful” images I broke the “sun behind the camera” rule; backlight – shining straight through a leaf or bloom – can offer lovely photographic opportunities, as well as “insoluble” problems.

Circa 300 greenhood species comprise the genus Pterostylis; discover more here.