Magnolias ~ Floral Friday

Magnolias in Rain, a photo by C.Duncan's Photography on Flickr.

Magnolias. They ooze old world romance and purity. I love trying to capture those things in the lens. I can spend hours photographing magnolias. And feel renewed afterwards. I was thrilled working on this image for today. Thrilled and ..... giddy. I just love magnolias.

The weather cooperated for once. I love photographing flowers after lazy rain showers, the sky still overcast. The colors are cleaner, no high contrast to work around, and a few rain drops still clinging. Add a little, and I mean little, fill flash to erase deep shadow on the subject and you have the makings of a fine photograph. Had my trusty tripod, plus bumped the ISO up to 320 since there was a slight breeze and I needed my shutter speed to freeze the blossom without loosing the exposure I wanted. It's extremely rewarding to see the image in your mind become the final product on the screen without excessive processing.

Now on to other news. You may have noticed that today's image has been posted through another source other than blogger itself. I want to thank Flickr for providing photographers with the option to post images through their site for a very important reason. I've noticed recently in my blog feed that someone is "lurking" about the blog, waiting for me to post images here, then googling the titles and copying my images on the google search site. NOT cool friends. I don't know what this person is using them for, but it's the sneaky way to ignore the copyright of any of my images. For the most part it's not a huge issue as I have been posting small resolution images, and I'm not naive about what happens in Internet land, but still. So posting through Flickr has eliminated a good portion of this problem as far as I know. And we need to spread the word... photographers work just as hard as anyone, the minute you take their images without permission, you devalue every photographer out there. We already struggle with being asked for free photographs every time we turn around. So let's enjoy the images, and if you're super attached to one, contact me, we'll work something out.

Thanks for the ramble today gang! I appreciate each and every one of you who show up to read the blog and let it inspire you somehow. Thanks! 

Hibiscus ~ Mono Monday!

"Rose of Sharon"

(1/15 sec.@ F/18, ISO 160, 200mm fl, Remote Shutter/Tripod, Overcast light)

I find Hibiscus challenging to capture properly and with any kind of finesse. They are only in their prime individually for about a day or so, then wilt considerably. I find it easier to photograph them before they fully open. The long flimsy petals crease, flop over, and stick together once they've bloomed. I stand out on the lawn with my camera and I find myself muttering things under my breath like, "come on, work with me girls!!!" as I try to find a single perfect flower to photograph. And if profuse on the tree, the blooms stand out in the background like a bad quilted effect, splotchy and clumped. So I thought I'd try to find a specimen from my front garden that would be workable as a monochromatic image today. It took some doing.

I let the fact that it was overcast after a rain, and that I wanted to use my telephoto, which is a fairly slow lens in low light, to dictate that I needed my tripod and remote so there was zero camera shake. I also know that in low light, my camera doesn't have great noise control when going higher than 200 ISO so I kept it down, also constituting the need for the tripod since after I metered and checked my histogram I realized my shutter speed needed to be longer to let in enough light.

I converted the image to B&W in PSPx2 by using the Platinum Film Fx filter and Curves to fine tune the exposure a bit while in Raw. Some high pass sharpen was applied when everything else was done. In the end, it reminds me of film instead of digital and I like how it looks as a print, with some texture almost.

Hope you all like it! This one goes out to my buddy Lonnie, who is always reminding me not to forget my love of B&W.

Thanks for the ramble, and have a great Monday gang!

Me, Myself and My Lens ~Telephoto Tuesday !

"As If Out of a Dream"

(1/200 sec.@ F/5.6, 68mm fl, 55-200mm zoom vr, ISO 100, fill flash, bright sun)

Bright light is a must if using the telephoto lens I have if there's anything even remotely close to a breeze. And Ontario seems very windy this spring. When zoomed in close on tiny flowers, I do all I can to make it work fast enough to eliminate blur because the closer and tighter you get to your subject, the longer it takes to get the shot, even opened up to a wider faster aperture.. It is not a very fast lens. But you work with what you have right?! Last week gave us some sun, and so I specifically went out to get cherry and apple tree blossoms at the nearby park. And my telephoto lets me get the prime blossoms farther up into the trees. The shot today was one of those perfect blossoms, totally isolated from the rest.

What I do love about my rather mediocre telephoto zoom though, is it gives some lovely DOF at it's larger apertures, even in bright direct sun. I can open her up to an F/5, and get a perfect soft background. And instead of blowing too much of the shot out, things have a glow where the light hits. Then the only trick is to watch the breeze, and when I sense it dying down before another current comes along I steady the camera and snap the shot. For this one, since the light was more or less behind the blossoms, I also used some fill flash. It helps to freeze any motion from the slight breeze and balanced out the light underneath the flowers.

There were a lot of tries before this one worked. We'll leave it at that.

And since I have other purchases as top priority, a fast telephoto (gosh, most priced for an arm, a leg, and your first born) is at the bottom of the list for now. So, it's a case of working the best with what I already own, knowing it's quirks and flaws like the back of my hand, and still producing images that will excite me, and hopefully others as well.

I guess what I want to say is know the limitations of whatever gear you have and work with it. It'll make you a better photographer. Usually more than replacing the lens will.

Thanks for the ramble folks! ... And have an amazing day.