Details

I have a request for more information on that last shot, so I'll add it for those of you who are interested. The skies were heavily overcast - perfect for a detail shot like this one - however, these flowers stand on tall stalks that sway constantly in the wind. Although the wind was light, the flowers were moving too much to capture a decent image. I took two flowers indoors and used a tripod to make sure everything was steady. In this case, I chose to use natural light from the window, since I wanted that soft, even lighting.

I needed a wide aperture to get as much depth of field as possible, so I shot at f/32. That meant a longer shutter speed as well - 1.3 seconds. Without the wind, that wasn't a problem.

Processing a shot like this one is very easy because the range of light is very small. I'm not dealing with any of the complex lighting situations that landscape photography presents. I kept my contrast relatively low so the flower would remain soft. Also - I usually sharpen an image before printing or posting on the web, but in this case, I chose not to do that.

For the shot you see here, I let the petals of two flowers overlap. After following the same steps as for the last shot, I chose to convert to black and white to accentuate the detail in the contrasting petals.