After yesterday’s snow fall I thought photographing some flowers during lunch would be a perfect way to remind me that it is supposed to be spring right now. Photographing flowers with a macro lens rocks – I try to get the blurry and ethereal look to my flower photos. Really shallow depth of field and the flowers begin to look painterly.
White flowers
Ethereal flower
Wow, I escaped the cubical at lunch! I am shocked! I usually eat lunch at my cube and check the internet to make sure things are going smoothly in the world. Today I grabbed my Canon 5DII and the rented 100mm macro lens to go practice.
Practice makes perfect and I have a LOT of practicing to do. (But my mom still loves me, allegedly). And what better thing to practice some macro photography than some flower photography around the downtown Provo area. The Courthouse had a number of flowers ready for their cameo.
Pink flowers with a macro lens
Macro photography gives you very little room for error. The depth of field can be quite narrow and I wasn’t using a tripod cause I want to try out the IS (Image Stabilization). And it doesn’t keep the wind from getting in the way, however, so you have to be a bit patient and try a number of shots.
Red flower bud in macro
And I thought it would be fun to photograph a dandelion, they could be a very beautiful flower – so I put a number of their seed in a neighbor’s lawn to see what it looks like. (Dear neighbor, you deserved it.)
Dandelion, underrated flower
And this is a crop of the photograph from above. This is why 21 megapixels is a good thing – a lot of room to crop so you can see all this detail.
Let's look at the dandelion a big closer
Yes, I know, more spring flowers – but since winter is slowly loosening its death grip on Utah I am going to celebrate and take some photos gosh darn it all to heck!
I did have a portrait shoot today – but I will blog some of those photos tomorrow.
Spring Blossom
Spring wants to be here – there are spring blossoms appearing on some trees. There are some daffodils and tulips that are appearing slowly. I just wish the weather would behave like spring. I had 2 inches of snow on my car this morning. Curse you spring!!
But here are some tree blossoms I saw at lunch and captured them with my Canon SX200 IS point-n-shoot using the macro mode. I will have to save up some money for a real macro lens for my Canon 5DII. Or maybe I can use my Lensbaby with macro attachements.
Spring Blossoms
I am in California this weekend – I love California! I spent all of high school in central California going to Cabrillo High School. I should come visit more often. But I am here on photography business, wedding photography to be exact. I will be posting the photos on my wedding photography website – but here is one photograph of some spring flowers. Isn’t it always spring in Newport Beach California?
And this is another example of the bokeh you can achieve with the Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens – that thing rocks and I think it is my new live in lens. I keep saying that but it is true, damn true!
A bouquet of bokeh of flowers
Autumn is in the air – leaves are turning from orange to red and soon to brown. A lot of trees are already bare. Perfect time at lunch to go and take some nature photos. The first photograph had two lady bugs – I just focused on one of them. I love the color of the background – it makes the red leaf pop out.
All of these photographs were edited in the Nikon D90. I was able to change to the vivid mode – change the exposure and the white balance. Yes I could do this in Lightroom – but I wanted to take advantage of the in-camera features. Always fun to practice.
Lady Bugs on the last leaf
All of these photographs were taken using the Nikkor f/1.4 50mm lens. I photographed wide open for most the shots. I wish at times that I could go a be closer – but the minimum focusing distance is about a foot and a half. Maybe tomorrow I will grab my macro lens for another photo walk at lunch.
Red autumn leaves
I had already grabbed my lunch ( a chef salad ) and was heading back to eat when I saw several bees pollinating purple flowers. So I took another few minutes to photograph the bees. The salad wasn’t getting any colder.
Bee pollenizing flowers
Colors of autumn leaves
I like this photograph – although if I had had my macro lens it would be even more cool because I could get a lot closer. But then, with so much room around the flowers it gives the photos a sense of scale – these flowers were tiny.
Lonely flowers fight for life
Autumn leaves turning brown
Just a few of the petals are in focus