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Sunflower Symmetry



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2 Comments |
Pachuco Platinum
 
Pachuco July 16, 2017
I have never seen a sunflower picture quite to wonderful as this one.
priyaselvan
 
priyaselvan October 13, 2017
Wow!!!!!!
Great shot Stephen!
If you are interested join my challenge
Patterns in nature..
This sunflower photo will the apt one for that
SRDPhotography
SRDPhotography October 15, 2017
Thank you so very much for your kind assessment and invitation Arul! :-) I will do so right away! :-) Thank you!
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Behind The Lens

Location

I took this photo at my Aunt's house, in Snug Harbor, North Carolina. At the time my Aunt had three house cats that loved to watch the birds at her bird feeders. My Aunt planted some Sunflowers, to feed the birds and give her cats something different to watch. The Sunflowers were a big hit with both the cats and the birds. This Sunflower was a late bloomer and I was able to get to it before the birds did.

Time

This photo was taken shortly before noon on a relatively cloudy day.

Lighting

Being that this Sunflower was close to the house, which has white siding, I didn't really think much about the lighting. Well, other than trying to stay out of the reflected light from the house! I have other examples of this same Sunflower, where I was casting a shadow on it with the camera, due to being so close.

Equipment

The camera is a Nikon D5000, which I bought as a kit. In the kit were some cheap add-on lenses that I occasionally add to my Nikkor 18-55mm lens. I don't own any Micro/Macro lenses, but using these cheap screw-on lenses helps create effects that I get asked about on occasion. When doing close-ups such as this, I generally set the focus to infinity, select other settings for the subject and then move the camera back and forth to try to achieve focus on the area I think is most interesting.

Inspiration

The real inspiration for this photo was my frustration with not being able to achieve a decent close up on some other flowers my Aunt had in her yard. When I first got this camera, the kit cost more than I wanted to pay, so I had to put off any thoughts of buying a lens that would help with Micro/Macro shots. My Aunt, being a professional photographer, encouraged me to experiment with what I had, instead of focusing on what I didn't. I spent a good part of the day trying different settings and lens combinations. In my early days of photography, I could not have afforded the amount of film I would have wasted on a day like this. I love digital photography!

Editing

No.

In my camera bag

I have to laugh when you say "normally!" It's hard for me to think anything in the kit I bought is normal, or that I do anything "normally." But generally speaking, there is always the camera body, I hope! (Nikon D5000) I have an AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm lens, an AF-S Nikkor 55-200mm lens. Plus the assortment of cheap screw-on lenses and UV filters. I generally carry my Bower SFD728N shoe mount flash, though I rarely use it. Same with my remote, though that does come in handy when taking long exposure/night photos. I generally have the light-weight tripod that came with the kit, though it's better used as a "stick" to get above and around things. If I really need a tripod, I carry my Velbon Stratus 470. In windy conditions, I hang my camera bag (Bower) from the center-point below the tripod. The rest of the bag is filled out with memory cards, batteries, chargers, 4 at last count. I do carry my Nikon manual with me, only because there's a pocket on the bag for it. No one actually reads the manuals, do they? lol

Feedback

Experiment, experiment, experiment! Back in the days of film, you had to be either rich, talented or educated in photography to get something decent, that didn't come out of a Polaroid. And yes, I've seen plenty of them screwed up too! Film and processing were expensive. The amount of experimenting you could do, depended on how much money you could waste. Since the dawn of digital photography, if you have to take 1,000 photos to get "the ONE," it's all worth it! As you get better at knowing your camera and subjects, you should be able to minimize the number of photos you toss. When it comes to the Sunflower photo, I took what I had and with patience, perseverance and a lot of experimenting, I finally got a photograph I was happy with. I see a lot of photos on View Bug that show me that I'm not alone in my approach to getting better photos!

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