Some failures and some flowers

[gardenersassistant]

I spent an hour and a quarter on my knees in the church grounds opposite our house yesterday looking for invertebrates. I found just one that stayed long enough to be photographed. More on that below. With that session not having worked out well I decided to have a quick look around our garden (it turned out to be just 15 minutes) to see if there were any flowers worth photographing. It was rather windy and a lot of the flowers were looking the worse for wear from being battered by high winds over the past several days, and most of the rest had gone into age decline and were spotty and/or had holes in them. Still, there were a few that looked ok (or in a couple of cases could be cleaned up in post to look more acceptable).

These are all unmodified natural light single-capture shots captured using aperture bracketing. It was too windy to attempt focus stacking.

#1 Hellebore



#2 Camellia



#3 Hebe



#4 Camellia



#5 Camellia



#6 Camellia



And the church grounds? Well, here is one of the two invertebrates I found, a rather small fly. The other was a springtail that scuttled across a leaf and disappeared before I could get it into the frame.

#7



I eventually gave up on the invertebrates but then I noticed a couple of other things to try, some water droplets and some daffodils. I didn't take enough care with either of them and neither worked out to my satisfaction. FWIW here is the best I managed.

#8 It was really difficult to get a nice line on any of the daffodils. The 400mm focal length didn't help because it made it difficult to get low enough and some trees got in the way from some angles because of the long working distance. I eventually managed to line this one up between obstructions just out of frame to the left and right, but then got the plane of focus in the wrong place and probably also used too large an aperture. f/11 as used for this shot is maximum aperture with the double teleconverter setup I was using. There is no aperture bracketing with this setup.



#9 There were some really nice multiple droplet compositions but I couldn't get enough in focus. I should have tried shooting for focus stacking. This was the only one I could make anything of.



--
Nick
Flickr image collections http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenersassistant/collections/
Blog
https://fliesandflowersetc-ramblings.blogspot.com/
Summary of photo activity since 2007 https://fliesandflowers.blogspot.com/2019/01/when-i-retired-in-2006-i-had-it-in-mind.html

 

[Jack Tingle]

Would that my failures looked this good.

Right now I'll swap our 5" of snow going on 8" for your hellebore.

Thanks for the images.

 

[Macromeds]

Lovely stuff Nick.

 

[DNSJR]

excellent series Nick, the Hellebore and the Hebe my picks, like the droplet as well

 

[gardenersassistant]

Would that my failures looked this good.

Right now I'll swap our 5" of snow going on 8" for your hellebore.

Thanks for the images.

Thanks Jack. Yes I'll settle for our recent few days of wind and rain rather than long periods of snow. We only see snow here once every few years. An inch or so last time as far as I recall. Might even have been less than that. Disappeared in a couple of days.

 

[gardenersassistant]

Lovely stuff Nick.

Thanks Mark.

 

[gardenersassistant]

excellent series Nick, the Hellebore and the Hebe my picks, like the droplet as well

Thanks. I think both Hellebores and Hebes can be very attractive, if you can get a good angle on them. We have several different Hellebores, and quite a few of that particular sort, but they are all planted where it is really difficult to get a good line on them.

 

[Henry Lozykowski]

Beautiful images Nick! I like most the first.

Henry

 

[gardenersassistant]

Beautiful images Nick! I like most the first.

Henry

Thanks Henry. I think Hellebores are very photogenic. I was very restricted in the angle I could get on that one. Here is one from several years ago where I could get a more direct view of the flower.





--
Nick
Flickr image collections http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenersassistant/collections/
Blog

Flies and flowers and ...... whatever. Ramblings

fliesandflowersetc-ramblings.blogspot.com

Summary of photo activity since 2007 https://fliesandflowers.blogspot.com/2019/01/when-i-retired-in-2006-i-had-it-in-mind.html