It was so smokey this morning I had to cut my walk short. The upside of all this smoke is the beautiful diffused light. I took the M3 out for a walk with the Sweet 50 and an extension tube. I was almost home when I decided to take another stab at my neighbor’s lavender. This bee came along and just as I was about to give up on him he struck the right pose and I nailed the focus. Yes, photography is sometimes a game of chance. Today I got lucky.
I found a bouquet of sunflowers at Fred Meyer yesterday for only $5.00 so of course I had to bring them home to the tiny studio. This one was shot with the sweet 50. I love how you are almost not sure what it is and then the flower petal comes into focus. I added a lightroom preset to bring out the bold colors and a texture for visual interest. This one is growing on me. I’m thinking acrylic print.
I went gunning for wildflowers on my morning walk this morning with the Trio28. Mostly I found chicory and queen Anne’s Lace. I’m still getting the hang of this wide angle macro thing but I’m finding that if there are other flowers in the background that adds a little interest. I also watched some training videos from Lensbaby yesterday and they even say that you should take three or four pictures in hopes that at least one will be in focus. But they also gave me the tip to use the zoom feature on my view screen to check the focus. I tried that on this one and it worked, though it is a bit of a challenge when hand holding.
In post processing I did crop in to see the main flower better. I added a high pass filter to make that sharp focus even sharper, and a vignette to bring the main flower forward.
This morning I needed to walk a package over to the post office so I grabbed the M3 with the new lens and headed out. On the way back I stumbled onto these Day Lilies next to Camelot theater. I had an “Oh, Goody” moment when I saw them as I have been shooting day lilies off and on but one never came up for the image of the day so I thought it was high time. the challenge of the new lens is getting the sweet spot of focus in the right place but when it happens the results are just amazing. I added a vignette to this one to bring the flower forward. Then I debated whether it needed a texture or not and decided to just try one. I loved the look of the first one I tried except that the texture was a little too in your face so I added a Gaussian Blur and masked it out over the flower and Voila! I’m pretty happy with the result on this one.
I am reaching that point in the project where I am wondering why I got myself into this. Seems like I always have better things to do than go out and look for flowers to shoot. Especially in the morning when it is expected to be over 100 degrees again today. But I forced myself to at least do a lap around the neighborhood with the new lens and found more beautiful sunflowers to shoot. I used to think it was a great thing to get a bee in my photograph but I am beginning to realize it is almost harder to get a photo of a flower without a bee on it. This one had the added issue of a bright blown out spot in the upper left which I thought to hide with a texture. Three textures later I finally found a look I could live with though I’m not sure I love it as much as the original. The new lens, by the way, is called Trio because you can set it one of three ways. In this case I’m pretty sure I had it on the sweet setting which works much like the Sweet 50 only it is a 28mm lens so gives a wider view of the flower.
Today I intended to go far a walk in the Railroad District with my new toy but there were thunderstorms going on so I decided to be safe and go back to North Mountain park where I could duck back into the car quickly if necessary. Fortunately it was not necessary. I’ve been looking for a daisy that was not past it’s prime for some time. This one was perfect and the raindrops were and added bonus.
It’s been a busy day and I had at first thought to post something from the archives but I got another new toy today. and had to try it out though at over 100 degrees I did not want to go outside so I clipped a flower from my black-eyed susan from the nursery and took it up to the tiny studio. My new toy is another lensbaby lens. This one fits on my mirrorless camera and gives me three looks a twisty background, a velvety look like the velvet and a sweet look like the sweet 50 but at 28mm. It took me awhile to figure out how to make it work but I’m excited about the possibilities. On this one I used a lightroom preset to desaturate it a little and added a texture.
Yep, another coneflower. I had a webinar that started at 8am and could not get out to photograph before the winds picked up. So, I decided to experiment a little with my lensbaby Sweet50 using my orange coneflower for a model. I had to use a 31 mm extension tube to get this close to the flower but this is exactly the ink of look I am trying for. I’m not sure about the focal point being dead center but as they say, even the rules of composition were made to be broken. One texture added for a little more interest in the backgound but masked out over the center of the flower.
I’ve been wanting to experiment with my 70 – 200 mm zoom lens for flower photography. I used to have a zoom lens that worked great for this but the manufacturers are now making them so that the minimum focusing distance is about 4 ft so that even zoomed in you can’t get a closeup of the flower. So, I decided to try it with an extension tube and it worked like a charm. As this is probably my sharpest lens I’m pretty excited about the possibilities.
I loved the composition on this image but I wasn’t too happy with the background which was black in the upper left and white in the lower right. So, between a lightroom preset and a texture I managed to bring them back toward brown to be more compatible with the flower and I even like the grungy texture that it added, especially in the corners.
One of my neighbors has the most beautiful sunflowers and they are just at peak bloom right now. I love how this one contrasts with the blue sky and has some supporting cast int he background. Very simple post processing with a high pass filter to bring out the details and a slight vignette to make the big flower the star.