Drop of dew on blade of grass in the early morning sun
early morning shot in the garden
early morning shot in the garden
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May, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in my back garden. It was a closeup enlargement of a drop of dew that was visibly sparkling from the kitchen window, drawing my attention, in the sunlight.Time
I took this quite early in the morning, after a heavy dew overnight. The combination of large dew drops and sunshine created a sparkling carpet of grass (and moss) which lent itself to photography. It is in fact one of my earliest photo's as I started photography as a hobby not long before I took this (as a series of water droplet and closeup shots), so I was extremely pleased with the amount of detail I managed to capture using a kit lens.Lighting
The sunshine was not too high, so reflected on the water droplets on the grass. It was notable that the sunshine early morning ( being lower in the sky) gave a better backlight to the dew, than could have been achieved later in the day.Equipment
As this was early on, I only had a fuji X-E2 and the kit lens 18-55mm. I rested the camera on the garden wall to give stability and to reduce the possible shake (several of the shots I took that morning had too much blur when enlarged). It was really a bit trial and error in shooting and developing the images, but as the grass grows up to the garden wall, I was able to set up only a few inches from the grass blades, allowing a bigger image. Nowadays I would probably use a macro lens or an extension tube attached to the lens to take the same sort of shot.Inspiration
I had been looking at closeup and macro images online (some of them on instagram) when I bought my camera and was immediately struck by some of the amazing macro shots of water droplets. In particular I had seen a beautiful set of photos with water droplets hanging from a bleeding heart flower, with background flowers captured inside the droplets. While I wasn't sure how to capture such images, I was drawn to try to capture such images as best I could.Editing
I use Lightroom for my picture processing and had to enlarge the photo and zoom in and crop it to get the part of the image I wanted. This photo image is one of quite a few I took to get a suitably focussed picture, centred on the dew. I didn't carry out much in the way of post processing changes as I hadn't become proficient back then, but did have to search for suitable parts of the overall photo (there were many blades of grass in the one photo after all) for what I wanted.In my camera bag
I tend to chop and change what I take in my bag depending on what I am aiming to do. For general photography, I carry a fuji X-T2 and either the original kit lens 18-55mm or a bigger 18-135mm zoom, which allows for distance shots. If I am aiming to undertake flower photography (a general passion of mine), I would probably carry a macro lens as well. I have taken to carrying a black plastic bin bag folded up in my case, to use if I need to lie or kneel on wet ground to get close to a subject - cheap and cheerful but effective.Feedback
I would say that focussing on a specific droplet of water on grass is difficult, as cameras tend to struggle to hunt for focus amongst so many blades at once (at least when I have been shooting). So ensure you have a stable base (maybe a beanbag or mini tripod) to ensure you minimise shake, try to focus on a single point and take a lot of shots, as with such small images, when blown up, many will probably be out of focus. Also, get the sunlight in front of you, as you really need the light to shine through the water and if at all possible, have a background feature that can be enlarged in the image.
