Photography – Impressionism – Abstract

Floral Mushroom-sf/5.6; 1/100 sec; ISO-800; 60mm

The Chicago Botanic Gardens offered an abstract photography class so I decided to enroll. Discovered that the best take away from this class was it pushed me to think outside the “box”. The above photo is a flower placed on a tree trunk mushroom ledge. With a little camera movement when the shot was taken, this was the result.

Flower Photography – Lensbaby

Clamatis-lensbabyLensbaby Sol 45 with 16mm extension tube  – Sony A6000 – f/6.3; ISO 250; 1/400 sec.

“Expectation is everything. Every day can be your day, if you expect it to be.”               Bob Moawad

Thought I would try taking some more photographs with the Lensbaby Sol 45. This time I added a 16mm extension tube. It seemed to work really well. It was a little windy today so I set the shutter speed to 1/400 of a second and was surprised at how sharp the focal point was given the wind.

Bud-Lensbaby

Bee on Bud-Lensbaby

 

Photography-Flowers and Backgrounds

Two yellow flowers, two different backgrounds.

Botanic Gardens-1.jpg

Botanic Gardens-2

With the summer days quickly flying by, I decided to visit the Chicago Botanic Gardens to photograph flowers. My focus was to isolate a flower and pay attention to background. At the time of capture I honestly had nothing in mind in choosing a background. But, after reviewing, discovered color can really impact the mood of an image especially when photographing flowers…two yellow flowers, two different backgrounds evoke two different moods.

Flower Photography – Narrowing the Focus

Lily - On the Inside

After taking a hiatus from photo shoots to learn and get comfortable with a new camera and lenses, I decided to take a new approach to my flower photography. My process has always been to find an interesting flower against a relatively good background and shoot it with a variety of lenses; wide, telephoto, macro, Lensbaby. My thinking is, a beautiful flower speaks for itself. Not too much thought or creativity goes into this process. Consequently, many of my flower photographs look like many of the photographs taken by everybody else.

For Easter someone brought me a Lily plant. Given spring is still fleeting here in Chicagoland (might snow this weekend), I decided to place the plant on a patio table and see what I could come up with creatively. Not too many ways to shoot a single lily. I kept focusing on what is the most interesting thing about this lily. This is what I came up with.

The photograph taken above was not cropped. The subject was shot as is. So this year, I’ve decided to challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone and photograph only a portion of every flower I shoot. I believe it is going to be “easier said than done”! But if nothing else, I am hoping to learn a lot, and it will definitely be interesting!!

The photo below was taken a few years ago.

Pansy - showing off