Had a few minutes this afternoon to go for a quick ride. I went up around the pond at 110th and then kind of explored that area. I wound up in the Conservatory Garden, which was pretty amazing. I'm excited to take Lib there!
Everyone can take these kind of pictures. Flower pictures are a sinch (in some ways--no disrespect intended), especially with cameras these days. To take a good flower picture, the key is to focus in on something, and then get rid of distractions. Distractions are anything in the picture that keeps you from looking at the subject. Think of like a stop sign in the background of your wedding pictures, or maybe a twig coming out of your aunts head when you took that family portrait. The key is to keep it simple. You can't really go wrong if you get close and switch your lens to the "Macro" setting (this allows you to zoom in really close to your subject), or, if you have an SLR, switch to manual focus and then manually focus up and close.
To accentuate your focus, try an aperture/f-stop close to 1. This will give you a nice blurry background (called 'bokeh').
After that, try different things with your photos. Patterns, colors, whatever.
The hardest part of a flower picture is to appreciate it. Try not to get caught up taking the picture so much that you don't even smell the flower or appreciate it. That, coming from me. Ha.
Also, let me know if you come up with a unique shot--that's hard to do when there are ten billion cameras and ten trillion flowers :) Still, it doesn't stop us from shooting.
Sorry, I kind of went off about how to take flower pictures, and then I looked at this post and realized these flower pictures were totally lame!
ReplyDeleteThat bokeh screws me up. I think i might have busted my 50mm lens - tried to use it last night taking photos of the treasure chest and got 2/50 to work! You can fix it in 4 seconds when you come into town in a few weeks.
ReplyDeleteMark those flower pics are totally great! We should all go to the tulip festival at Thanksgiving point when you guys are out here. We have to go on some sort of adventures. Mr. Finn is big enough for the back pack now - we're so excited to go on a great hike or something. Maybe we could hike up to Silver Lake with you guys- we love that hike.
ReplyDeleteI would LOVVVE to go on a hike while we're out there...umm, are adelie & I invited? I guess I just jumped into that ;) ha! '
ReplyDeleteanyway, these pictures are great. I wish mark could do a photo-seminar and teach me the basics. there's so much to learn...and you obviously have the skills! for now, I'll keep working with the guidance you've given on the blog! love ya!