Isabel's Sunflower
Stunning sunflower grown in the front yard of our children's friend next door. Shot with close-up filter
Stunning sunflower grown in the front yard of our children's friend next door. Shot with close-up filter
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Apr, 2015Views
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Top Shot Award 22
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Behind The Lens
Location
This stunning giant sunflower was grown in the front yard of our children's friend, Isabel, who we lived next door to at the time.Time
I waited until the 'golden hour' of a glorious late summer's evening to ensure that nature provided the very warmest lighting possible, without the need for forcibly post-processing the colour after capturing the image.Lighting
The flower was in a group of three up against the south-west facing wall of the house next door. It was clear, then, that early evening summer sun would be needed to get good illumination without over-shadowing from the other flower heads. I had attempted the same shot the previous evening, but the conditions were not quite the same and resulting colour would not have been quite so magnificent.Equipment
This photo was taken simply to capture the joyful colour and share it with the neighbour that grow it. It was not taken with any prospect of a wider audience in mind so, I must admit, this is a JPEG out of my Nikon D7000 which was set to AWB. I had only recently started playing with macro photography and had bought a set of 4 close-up filters. Being new to macro, I was concentrating on composition, focus and depth of field so I let the camera do the rest on this occasion. This shot was taken with a +4 close-up filter screwed onto the front of a AF-S 18-200 VR Mk1 that I had bought second-hand.Inspiration
Unfortunately, we had to move out of that area and we knew that we would miss the lovely neighbours that we had grown close to over the previous 10 years. In particular, we know that our children would miss their friend Isabel next door. We gave Isabel this photo printed on a 90cm by 60cm canvas as a farewell present and it has adorned her bedroom wall ever since.Editing
The vibrancy of the colour is what really makes the photo and I think that the JPEG from the D7000 accurately reproduced the golden yellows. Despite the sunflower itself being near-perfect, I did fill in a small gap between two petals using Adobe Photo Elements. This ensures that there is nothing to detract from the impact of the vivid colour and the changing structures across the image.In my camera bag
As a novice on a budget wanting kit to cover everything from family to flowers to fast jets, I have opted to regularly carry a jack-of-all-trades 18-200mm. Even a second-hand Mk1 AF-S 18-200mm VR produces better images when cropped to the equivalent of 300mm than the Nikkor 70-300mm I used to have. I almost always have a circular polariser and a macro filter with me and, if I need a faster piece of glass, I have a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 which is crisp enough to allow for significant cropping.Feedback
Although this was just a flower next door, a few feet from my own front door, I think that the advice is still the same as for the exotic adventures that would take a pro halfway across the world: check your location, research your shot and be patient! This shot was just on the 'smaller' end of that same scale!
