WildOats

The weather has been a little uncooperative lately. We’ve had either rain, or severe thunderstorms, or it’s been so hot and really humid. Anyway you look at it, it’s not been very conducive for going out for my walks and taking pictures.

But yesterday, it was more manageable. It was sunny and warm, but not enough to give you a heat stroke. So I went for my walk and enjoyed some outdoor time. It was nice to be out for a while and get some fresh air.

After a while I did find this tree. I’m not sure what kind of tree it is, but it had these blooms on it. As I got closer to the tree, I noticed that some of the blooms had fallen off the tree and were on the ground beside the tree. I picked up one of the blooms and looked at it. I liked the way it looked, so I decided to take it home and see if I could take some pictures of it.

I set the bloom up by my window, the side lighting really brought out the color of the flower. It also made the veining stand out, which I liked.

Since I came in so close to the flower, you can really see the pollen it has. Most of it is down deep at the base, but there is also some right at the tips of the petals. I didn’t notice that until I uploaded the picture onto my computer.

The last time I was taking pics, it was of that pink lily. While shooting the flower I noticed something cool. Although the overall color of the flower is pink, when you come in closer, and look at the center of it, it has a lot of other colors there. When I looked inside I saw it had greens, yellows, pinks and reds. So I thought it might be nice to concentrate on that this time around.

I set the flower up in a vase, and had at it. The colors really are beautiful, and you’d probably never notice them unless you look specifically for it. And then you also have to look very closely.

The challenge of this shoot was in that it was very close up. The focus is hard to nail, and the plane of focus is very narrow. So it took some arranging and focusing back and forth, but I think I finally managed to get a shot I liked.

I like all the intricate details of the reds of the petals. You can also see the ridges and patterns and how delicate they are. But my favorite part is still the color transitions starting at the center green.

This week I continued on with my black background. I pretty much got tired of not having a big enough background. Every time I set the flower up the way I wanted it, the black paper background would not be situated in a good way. I’d always have to adjust it. Either I could see white on one side or the other. Or the tape I was using would let go, and the paper would fall off the wall. Or if FINALLY the paper was situated properly, it made positioning the flower very difficult.

So I had enough of that, and decided to get myself a bigger backdrop, and make my life easier. I wasn’t sure what to buy though. So off I went to the dollar store to see what I could find. A few seconds after I walked in I see a black table cloth. Wow I thought……that’ll be great. So I grab that and keep looking for anything else that might work. I didn’t see anything else, so I payed my buck and left.

I get home and open the table cloth thingy, only to find it’s plastic. I was kinda concerned that the sheen of the plastic might be bad. I thumb tack it to my wall and it’s great.A huge background, so now I won’t have to worry about positioning anymore. BUT….. the thing has folds and creases on it, from how it was folded in it’s packaging. Nice try, but no go.

Then another idea comes to me. How about a black bed sheet? So off to Walmart I go and get a black sheet. It also has creases but with some ironing, those are gone. I tack the sheet to my wall….taa daa!!!! It works. I’m happy with the sheet.

Now I go get a flower and get to it. I bought another lily type flower. You don’t have a good idea of what it will look like when you buy it. The flower is all closed up, in a bud. Then it slowly starts to open. It’s always a surprise when you see how pretty it is inside when it opens. This lily had all different shades of colors in it. From the green of the stamens to the pinks and reds of the petals.

My favorite part of this image is where the green and the yellow and the pink meet. It’s very colorful in real life. What’s your favorite part of the flower?

After the last shoot, where I photographed the collection of small flowers, I decided to go large again. Shooting a large flower is a bit different than shooting smaller things. It allows you to be able to move further back. It also makes it easier to focus. And since you are further away from the subject, you also have less motion. So all that taken together does simplify a few things.

I went back to that bouquet I bought. I had a lily in there. That’s a much bigger flower than the one I shot last. So I picked that up, and made my way over to my window. I tapped my black piece of paper to the wall. I set the table up and put the lily into the vase, and positioned it.

Shooting the lily, was nice in that it was a decent size. It filled a good portion of the frame. It also allowed me to move back away from the flower. It was a ton easier to focus on. In fact, I was able to move back far enough, that the autofocus worked fine on it’s own.

The only problem with the lily is the color. It is white. White brings it’s own set of troubles. White can fool your camera meter. If there is a lot of white in your frame it will fool the meter, and you’ll wind up getting underexposed pictures. Another problem with white, is that you can also go the other way. You have to be careful, and not overexpose the white. When you do that, you loose all the detail in the white areas.

So to try and nail the shot, I bracketed my exposure. What is bracketing? Well you shoot your picture with the setting your camera tells you. But then you also shoot to overexpose the shot a bit, and then to underexpose the shot a bit. That way you increase your chances of getting the right exposure.

Ok, so after saying all that, what did I come up with? Here it is.

In this shot it turns out I had to overexpose a little bit. The white of the flower I guess was fooling my camera. Had I not overexposed a little, and shot at what the meter had recommended, the shot would have been too dark and underexposed. But keeping that in mind, had I gone too far and overexposed too much, I would have lost detail in some places of the white petals. Overall I think it balanced out nicely. I’m happy with the results. What do you think of it?

For the past week or so I’ve been using a black background for my floral pictures that I’ve been shooting. I’ve been happy with the way it’s been working out. So today I ventured back to the bouquet I bought. I found another purple-ish flower, that I thought might look nice in front of the black background.

I’m not sure what the flower is called. The past few times I’ve picked bigger flowers. This time around, I decided to try using another technique. This flower is a decent size overall, but it is a collection of smaller individual flowers. I wasn’t sure how it would all play out, but what the hell…..give it a try I thought.

I set myself up like usual, and started doing my thing. The difficulty of this shoot was trying to get as much in focus as possible. All the individual flowers, are all on different planes. Meaning that some flowers are closer, some are further away. Some are curved and on an angle.

The thing about shooting close up, is that the plane of focus you get is very narrow. So if you focus on some spot, you might only get a few millimeters in front of that spot and a few millimeters in back of that spot in sharp focus. Then the further away from your focus spot you go, the more out of focus it becomes. The more close up you shoot, the smaller that range of focus becomes.

Here’s the flower I was shooting.

As I said, each flower was on at a different level and at different angles. I also wanted to get as much as possible into focus. I dialed in a large number on my camera for my f/stop. In this particular case I went with f/22. That would allow me to have an area in focus that would be larger. But when you do that, the opening of the lens gets smaller, which lets in less light. So what does that mean? Well that means, that now my exposure time has to get longer. Since the hole is smaller, I have to let the opening stay open longer. In this particular shot, I had to keep the shutter open for 6 seconds.

Now the other thing to keep in mind is motion. When you have a long exposure, your odds of having motion blur go way up. I was using a focal length of about 80mm. So you don’t want to go slower than 1/80 of a sec. And here I am having to use a 6 second exposure. There is no way you can hand hold your camera that long and not get motion blur. I had my camera mounted on my tripod, so that was ok. But you can also get motion blur if your subject moves. Now since the subject is flower it won’t move much you say. Well….no it won’t. BUT, since the exposure is so long, you can’t have any vibration at all, on the floor, or the building you’re in. You can’t move while the shutter is open or the floor and table shakes a very small amount. You can’t breathe in the direction of the flower or it moves. Such small motions that you’d never notice in everyday life, make a huge difference when shooting like this. You have to be careful or the picture turns out blurry.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. I focused on the flowers closest to me. And I think the focus carried far enough back to have a nice effect. The lighting is ok. But I think my favorite part is the contrast between the purple of the flower, and the yellow stamens in the center. On a larger photo you can see much more detail in the stamens.

After trying the black background last time and liking it, I’ve decided to continue on with it. The black seems to set off some of the colors of the flowers. It’s also nice to change things up a little and move away from the white I’ve been using up till now.

The problem however is that the piece of black paper I’m using is something like 2ftX3ft. Which does sound pretty big, but it needs to be much bigger. It’s a pain to have it align up correctly with the viewfinder. It also limits you as to how far you can move the camera away from the paper. If you go too far back, you start to see the white wall on the sides. It also limits you how far you can zoom in and out. On top of that it also limits how you can position your subject. I think in the future I’ll have to go out and get like a black shower curtain or something to make things a bit easier.

Anyway, I had another crack at it. This time I decided to use a rose. I went with a pink-redish color. I figured it would give a nice separation between the colors. I set the rose up in a vase and started positioning. I liked the look of the folds of the petals. So I decided to concentrate on those.

When I started looking at the folds, I liked how they started to cast shadows from the side lighting. The shades of lightness and darkness is what makes the photo for me.

My usual set up for shooting those flower pics has been kept pretty simple. Which is a good thing, cause I can’t handle anything too complex with my limited photography skills. Basically I’ve put a table next to my window, and topped it with a vase with the flower in it. For the background I’ve been using a blank white wall. See….told ya…..nice and simple. I liked that this kept the background plain, simple, and not distracting. That way your focus is kept on the subject, and your eye doesn’t wonder around. And I’ve liked the results I’ve been getting.

This week I’ve decided to see what effects I could get by changing my background. I still want to keep the background simple and not distracting. But I just wanted to have a litle bit of a change of pace. You know….variety and all.

So I had this black piece of paper that I wasn’t using. I decided to try that and see what my results would be. I took the paper and taped it to my wall in the background. I quickly found out, that it can be a little bit of a pain. You really have to get it exactly right, or in the view finder or the resulting pic, you get a portion that’s black and a portion that’s white. It would be much easier if the black piece of paper was much bigger. But you have to work with what you have.

Overall I think I like the black background. It sets the subject off nicely. And since I’ve been doing the white for a while, it’s always nice to mix things up. Ok….so here’s an example of what I came up with. I shot the same flower twice. Once with the usual white background, and then with the black. Here we go.

#1 with the usual white. Then the next one with black.

In this case, I think I like the black one better. I think it works well with the purple. Which do you prefer?

This week Apple is having it’s WWDC. What’s the WWDC? It stands for World Wide Developers Conference. It’s a week long conference, where developers and Apple meet and show new, up and coming things. On Monday Steve Jobs CEO of Apple gave his keynote speech. It was pretty cool and if you’re interested in watching it you can see it here http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0806wdt546x/event/index.html

The keynote was basically all about the iPhone. It’s actually cool the way the iPhone is turning out. What I like about it, is that it syncs really easily with your computer and you have everything you want with you in a small little device. You have all your contacts, your calender, you can get your email, and you can surf the web, all your music, all your photos, and tons of little widgets. The other thing I like is that developers are constantly adding more and more capabilities and widgets to it all the time. And if you want to get some new feature, you just download it.

Yesterday, Apple informed us that they will be releasing a new iPhone. The new iPhone will have a few new improvements, and I think by this time next year, this is going to be huge. The new iphone is now 3G, which means it’s much faster when you surf the web over the phone connection, when wifi is not available. It also has GPS built in now, and on top of that Apple has lowered the price to $199. You can read up on it here http://www.apple.com/iphone/

I think at this price, you are getting a lot. All in one small device, instead of carrying a bunch of other things in your pockets. The other thing about the iPhone, and what I think is the beauty of it, is that it’s easy to use. It carries the whole Apple philosophy, keep it simple and elegant. So……are you gonna get one?

……. Give up.

At the end of last week I went and bought this tiger lily. I thought it would be a cool subject to photograph. So I brought it home, set it up, and started to shoot it. Somehow, I just wasn’t into it for whatever reason. It wasn’t feeling right to me, and I stopped photographing it after a little while.

I decided to go back to the lily the other day and try again. I set the flower up next to my window, and was hoping for the best. This time through, it felt a lot better to me. I wasn’t struggling like the time before. I was happier with what I was seeing in the view finder. Not really sure why, but what do I know? I guess I learned you can’t force creativity. Not that I have much creativity to begin with.

Anyway, I was feeling better about the flower this time around. At first I just snapped away a few shots of the flower, having it fill the viewfinder. Arranging it in a way that I liked. I liked a few of the images I was getting. Here’s an example of what was coming out.

Overall I like images that are clean and simple. To me the whole point of the photo should be obvious, and not too cluttered. I think I got that in this shot. The background is simple, and not too distracting. I think I did a decent job with the lighting and exposure. I also liked how the color of the lily was reproducing.

After I took a few shots like the one above, I decided to try doing more close ups. I like close ups, because it gives you a different perspective. You get to see things a bit differently, and I think that is interesting. Well it is to me anyway……and since I was the one photographing…..that’s what I did.

I stabilized the flower, moved my tripod and camera closer and had at it. Shooting the close ups was a lot more challenging. Everything now happens at one time. The exposure is more critical. The composition becomes harder, because more things come into play. How close can I get the lens to the flower, and still be able to focus? How does the image look in the viewfinder this close? How do the individual pieces of the flower look together, or one at time in the viewfinder? You also have to manually focus when you’re shooting this close, autofocus gets fooled. So all that together, and at the same time was a lot to consider.

So what did I finally come up with? Ok …ok here’s a sample.

I liked the detail that I was getting at this magnification. It doesn’t show too well on this smaller photo, but when it’s larger you can see it. I also liked the lighting on the dark stamens.

I’m still continuing with my floral close ups. I went back to the store and found something new to photograph. I was happy to find something I haven’t seen there a thousand times already. I found a tiger lily.

The thing I liked about it, is the size and the color. Both I thought would work for me. The tiger lily is a decent size, and I thought it would fill enough space of the picture. The color was also nice. It’s a deep orange, which I was hoping would reproduce well.

I brought the flower home. Set myself up next to my window and started shooting. I was right about the size of the flower and the color. Both were working fairly well. I was happy about that. The only problem I was having, was that for some reason I wasn’t feeling what I was shooting. Somehow my Feng Shui was off. I guess it was just an off day.

I kept moving the flower around. Here and there. Back and forth. Looking down onto it. Looking up at it. Somehow nothing was really saying…..that’s it. Shoot from this angle!! So I did get a few shots off, and then decided to call it a day.

Here’s what I was getting.

I like how the color was reproducing. I like how the flower was filling the space. But somehow…. I don’t know……I wasn’t happy with it. I’ll come back to it again tomorrow. Hopefully things will fall into place then. In the meantime, what do you think of it?