November 2008 Archives

Yesterday, I embarked on a photo excursion to Mayfield Park and Preserve with a few other Austin garden bloggers: Sue of Cool as a Cucumber, Vicki of Playin' Outside, and Jenny of Rock Rose.  I spent a little time beforehand compiling some of the compositional and photographic techniques I've learned in photography and visual design classes I've taken in the past, but I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, having never really taught about photography before.  I learned a few things from the process that I can hopefully incorporate in the future, if I do this again.

The plan was to talk about composition for 15 or 20 minutes, then send the group out to take some pictures incorporating what we'd talked about; then we'd talk about camera technique and the science of basic photography, then go take more pictures incorporating ideas like depth of field.  It turned out, the group had plenty of questions to fill the time, so it became challenging to fit photography into our two-hour timeframe.

We wound up having 20 minutes or so to shoot at around 4pm.  Mayfield Park is fairly shaded, with pockets of clearing throughout, and even at 4pm, it was challenging to chase the light, now that the time has changed.  Next time, we might want to start at 2 or 2:30, so that the light will be a bit easier to work with when it's time for shooting!

Normally, I edit my photography very heavily before I post it on my weblog.  I'll seldom post more than 10% of the shots I take.  However, in the interest of providing a bit of further instruction, I thought I'd post more of my photos from this particular shoot, talk a bit about what I was thinking when I took the shots, and discuss what worked and what didn't.

First, I should point out that my photographic subjects were determined in large part by where I could find good light.  If the area was shaded and the light was flat, I didn't even bother.  Also, for reference, I used my 105mm Sigma macro lens for all these shots.  I didn't really have enough time for much lens switching.

For the grackles above (f/32, 0.5 seconds), I was really trying to practice capturing water motion.  This was definitely a tripod shot, at a half a second shutter speed.  Doing long exposure shots is extremely difficult with living subjects, and you can see where the grackles moved while the shutter was open.  (The grackle on the left does not have a vestigial third eye.) I actually expected to see the grackles move much more and turn into black blurs.  I was surprised to see they held relatively still!

For the next couple of photos, I was experimenting a bit with framing.

I think (though I'm not positive) that this is a crinum (Crinum angustifolium).  It reminds me of the bog-loving spider lily (Hymenocallis occidentalis) native to east Texas and Louisiana.


  My camera data for these two shots was f/2.8, 1/6000 sec.  f/2.8 is the largest aperture my macro lens has available, and it gives a very shallow depth of field when I get up close to the subject.  This means I have a razor-thin plane of focus.  It's challenging to catch something meaningful to focus on in that plane.  I'll generally focus on the stamen of a flower, if that's my subject.  In landscape photo above, only one stamen is in crisp focus, but the topmost petal is in good focus, and one of the lower petals is crystal-clear.  I consider that kind of a mixed result, but the swooping lines of the petals and stamens give this photo a painterly quality that I like.

On the portrait version to the left, the top petal is in crisp focus, and the stamens look even more painterly.  I think I like the execution of this photo better. 

I experimented with the portrait and landscape formatting because of the shape of the plant and the form of its blooms.  The landscape format gives me access to the full breadth of the bloom, but the portrait format hints at the verticality of the plant itself.  I'm not sure which I like better - what do you think?

I wish I'd noticed the bud at the bottom, which is blocking the petals I was shooting, or the wilted bloom below.  It wouldn't be appropriate to damage the plant at Mayfield Park, but I might have been able to hold them out of my way.  In my own garden at home, if I'd noticed the spent bloom, I would've pinched it off and done a bit of housekeeping before snapping the picture.

I had a chance to visit Gabriel Valley Farms, a local wholesale nursery, to do some photography.  I got a chance to wander around a bit and found these spectacular Mexican flame vines (Senecio confusus), which had attracted this male queen butterfly, who posed prettily while I snapped pictures.

I had to do some googling to figure out that he's a male queen butterfly - you can tell by the dark spots on his hind wings.