Just point the lens to the sky and...

It's usually difficult to get photos of a plant or flower isolated in a normal setting as there's always background distractions and colours lingering around, no matter how much you bokeh it out. Blurring the background heavily narrows the depth of field on a subject. and you can't really avoid all the background colour unless you're in a studio setup, or you do some selective colouring (not exactly my favourite technique). I decided to experiment with a few shots by using an overcast day as my flat, colourless background, which meant shooting upwards.

These were all taken around March-April, when the weather was still nice and grey. I set my camera's white balance to Daylight to preserve the colours; despite the cloudy day, I didn't want these shots warmed up. (I also rarely use 'auto' white balance anymore, which probably would have had the same effect.) I like that they look cold and icey, especially the last shot of the newly emerging blossoms. I think they also look a bit like slides from a microscope, particularly the shot of the green leaves. Shooting into what is essentially white light meant that the foreground subjects were a bit dark. I didn't want to use my on-camera flash because it's crap (and I didn't have anything at hand to diffuse it) so I adjusted the shadows afterwards in post.

I think they turned out quite nice. The plants are in isolation with no noisy background colours or shapes (no need for selective colour), with just a little help from Photoshop and an English spring time.