One Subject, One Focus
Two yellow flowers, two different backgrounds.
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.
Chicago Skyline – f/5.6; ISO 800; 1/15 sec.
Danube River – f/7.1; ISO 200; 1/125 sec.
Sorrento, Italy – f/10; ISO 200; 1/250 sec.
“Water is the most perfect traveler because when it travels it becomes the path itself,” Mehmet Murat Ildan.
Sony a6000; Lensbaby Sol 45 with extension tubes; manual focus.
“The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.” Therese of Lisieux
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.
All of my photo processing is done using a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. I also use the NIK Collection which is a plugin that can be used in both programs.
f/9; 1/15; ISO-100; 135mm; +0.3 steps
f/8; 1/6; ISO-400; 60mm
f/4.5; 1/80; ISO 400; 60mm
Comments are always welcome.
