Purple flowers
Small flowers-weeds near my garden.
Small flowers-weeds near my garden.
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Feb, 2017Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken in my home garden in Woodstock, Ohio in the spring. These flowers were buttercup sized, and deeply saturated similar to violets. I have no idea what flowers these are.Time
This was in the morning, about an hour after sunrise. They faced the rising sun and were fully illuminated.Lighting
These were naturally lit, no reflectors or fill light.Equipment
I used my Nikon D3300, Tamron SP AF 90mm F/2.8 Di Macro lens. I had so much light, I was able to hand hold and stop down the lens to get a bit more depth of field.Inspiration
I was walking our dog around the yard and spotted these small flowers and how saturated the color was. When I'd finished walking the dog, I went to my camera and sat on the ground, steadied my elbows on my thighs and took 3 shots in rapid succession. Although I may lack in preplanning my subjects, I'm always looking for something beautiful that catches my eye. Hopefully a camera is nearby and accessible.Editing
I use lightroom as a database for my photography. I use, at various times, GIMP (Open Source Software), and the NIX collection (From Google and now free and unsupported). As I recall, I started with a lightroom preset called "vibrant landscape", it over-saturated the blooms themselves. I normalized the purple saturation and adjusted the green. I normalized the light and dark ranges. I cropped the shot, slightly. As I recall, those were the steps I took from editing the RAW photo format that I shoot (Always shoot RAW). When exported by lightroom, the copyright notice was applied and standard sharpening for the screen was used.In my camera bag
I use a backpack by Ruggard, Outrigger 45. I usually have my Nikon D3300 with a Tamron 75-300 mm lens attached. As this is the largest lens I own. Additionally, I have the two "Kit" lenses from Nikon 18-55 and Nikon 55-200. I took this shot with the Tamron 90 mm macro. All lenses have UV filters on them to protect them, and stored in neoprene rubber lens bags. I keep a spare camera battery and charger, a cheap dedicated flash (bounce, zoom, swivel, TTL) spare AA batteries for the flash. At least 3 Sandisk 100 MB/s Micro SD cards, usually 32 GB cards. Other items are lens hoods, lens "pen", spare USB camera cable and a lightweight tripod velcros on to the bottom of the pack. I love this bag, it holds a LOT of gear.Feedback
I nearly always choose to shoot within an hour of sunrise and/or sunset. I like this light. With a macro lens, it is often best to get down low, to eye level with your subject. Don't be afraid to hand-hold when an opportunity comes along (especially in strong light) as a tripod is not always accessible or available. Always shoot RAW images. My style is to minimize processing where possible. For me, in my own mind, extensive processing is less photography and more artistic license -- I like to show things as they appeared in my mind's eye when I took the photograph.
