White Out

Last night I was playing with a bunch of wildflowers that I picked and put in a blue glass vase. I love the vibrant yellow with the cobalt blue, but how it looked on my table in the photo just wasn't doing it for me. The background is my messy kitchen (its clean now thanks to a few hours alone this morning yay!!) and the colors don't really pop. Also the vase, which is simple and beautiful, doesn't get the full attention it deserves.

It was late afternoon and the sun was on the other side of the house. I am sure it doesn't really matter for this trick as long as there is daylight at all. What I did was arrange the vase and

flower so that I would be facing the large sliding glass door with my camera. I pulled my gauzy curtains shut (probably does not matter if you have them but I think it helped a little) and removed any objects that were in front of the door. I put my camera on Manual. Next, I opened up my aperture as wide as it would go on my 18-55 mm lens. I set the shutter speed to 1/13 of a second and my ISO at 400. Here is the result:

Simple, elegant, and I think would make a great print! I think I will get one made. I have done nothing to this photo except retouch a couple of shadows on the edge. I may further retouch to remove the slight shadow on the right hand side, but as far as the lighting effect here that was all camera!

Play around with flowers and lighting! You can get some really neat results!

Soften Up

Sometimes you just want a photo to focus on one thing, and have everything else kind of fade into the background. This can be achieved in two ways. The above photo was processed using Picasa. I opened the photo, clicked on the Effects tab, and chose "Soft Focus". This creates a central focal "circle" that you can adjust to widen or constrict. There is also a slider bar to adjust the amount of blur you are giving edges. I usually widen it and reduce blur so that it looks more natural. It depends on the kind of photo it is.

The photo above in this case represents a use of the settings on my camera. I switched the dial to Av (Aperture priority) and opened up the Aperture as wide as it would go, in this case I believe it was set at 4.0. The camera automatically selects a shutter speed to go along with the lighting. I got as close to the flower as my camera would allow (using the 55-85 mm lens) and this is the result. The background is nice and blurry, an effect called "bokeh" in the photography world, and the tulip and dew drops are nice and crisp. Very pleasing to the eye!