flowers – How Do You Figure?

Now that I’ve gotten some more equipment in to assist in Dollfie photography, I decided it was time to put it all to good use. Since Rin’s last outing, she got a new outfit, a tripod mountable stand from Dollfie World, and a new mode of transportation. I’ve since acquired a new lens for my camera which has already proven itself to be great for close ups and portraits. Rin’s last outing to Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden happened to be on Mother’s Day, so pedestrian traffic was higher than normal. This time, I picked a “normal” beautiful Sunday morning, when everyone else in the area was attending church. There was barely anyone else on the grounds, which allowed me to shoot in peace.

I also chose to start near the back of the garden and move forward to further reduce running into someone early on. Enough text, time for some cute!

Somehow I’m reminded of a line from a certain Monty Python movie… something about huge tracts of land?

Continue reading “Rin goes out… again” →

A couple weeks ago, I picked up a brand new Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens from Amazon to shoot with. Being used to various zooms, it was a bit of a change in shooting style going to a non-stabilized prime lens. Once I got used to it, I found that it produced far sharper images, wonderful background blur, and beautiful portraits. The somewhat short focal distance got me to thinking… how good would it be for doing close ups?

To find out, I signed up for a macro photography workshop at Daniel Stowe. The instructor walked us through some tips and showed us some (expensive) equipment that would help, then it was off to the field!

My first attempts showed how sharp the lens is. These were taken at f/5.0 (and cropped a bit). I’m sure if I worked at it, I could get my reflection in those water droplets… Just as a quick note, all of the photos in this post will display the full sized counterparts when clicked. 🙂

Continue reading “Dabbling in close-up photography” →