Three small flowers and a grass flower-head

Don't see many plants here, so perhaps no one is interested, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway.

These were captured in March, March, May and October last year. The first three were captured with a Canon SX10is, using a Raynox 150 or possibly a Raynox 250 close-up lens. The last one was captured with a Panasonic G3, probably using a Canon 500D close-up lens.









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http://fliesandflowers.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenersassistant/

Very nice indeed. Please post regularly

John Roy said:

Very nice indeed. Please post regularly

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Thanks John, that is very encouraging.

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http://fliesandflowers.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenersassistant/

Very nice images. The background colors make this like art for me. Anything about plants is interesting. Thanks for sharing.

stef said:

Very nice images. The background colors make this like art for me. Anything about plants is interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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Thanks. I do tend to play with the camera position and direction, aperture and magnification searching for backgrounds that I like. Tiny changes can sometimes have a surprisingly large impact. I also have scissors and tweezers in my bag and, especially when working down in the grass like this, occasionally remove things that don't fit nicely in the picture such as dead stalks that are very light in colour and brightness or make lines that jar with the other shapes and lines in the picture.

I would love to be able to paint, but I can't, so I suppose this is my substitute for it.

My wife is very much into plants, which gives me some nice subjects, like the last of these. But I find that if I pay attention there are other, often rather small things, that pop up here and there and make good subjects. For example the first three of these are weeds in the lawn.

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http://fliesandflowers.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenersassistant/

Fantastic bokeh on the 2nd one (what kind of plant is it?)

Brilliant images, thanks for sharing with us..Caroline

travelbugtz30 said:

travelbugtz30 wrote:

Brilliant images, thanks for sharing with us..Caroline

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Thanks Caroline.

seraiah said:

seraiah wrote:

Fantastic bokeh on the 2nd one (what kind of plant is it?)

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Thanks. It is a grass of some sort, but I'm afraid that's all I know. I'm almost completely useless at identifying plants (or anything else for that matter). The Gardener (aka wife) is very knowledgeable about a lot of plants, Latin names etc, so sometimes I do give the names of plants she identifies for me. But in this case I'm afraid she doesn't know about the grass. The two little flowers are weeds in the lawn - I don't know if the grass is another weed, or simply the grass the lawn is made of.

The background was mainly luck, followed by a bit of experimentation. I was shooting towards a low, late afternoon sun (which I do quite a bit), with the camera held right down on the ground. There was light coming through a hedge and I suspect, over on the right, around the end of the hedge. The look of the background changed radically depending on the precise direction of the shot, as well as varying with the aperture and focal length, and at a particular angle some of the background suddenly took on a look that I found rather pleasing. I took a lot of shots with tiny adjustments to the direction of the shot to try to get that pleasing look across more of the photo.

Probably worth noting that the first three were captured with an SX10is bridge camera. As shown in the Exif data (which is there despite what the pop-up says), all three used f/8. As with many bridge cameras, this is the smallest aperture available on the SX10 and in terms of depth of field equates to somewhere around f/22 for micro four thirds or APS-C. So, despite appearances, these are not large aperture, narrow dof shots. Quite the opposite in fact.