A late spring has finally come to my home in Pritchard. It’s been cold and rainy even though there is only about 30 days till summer, and I suppose the usual dry summer heat.
This morning there was a light rain falling and I thought I should walk around my yard and take some photographs of flowers in bloom.
My first thought was to put a macro lens on my camera and connect a flash so I could highlight the water droplets. However, as I was deciding which Macro to use (I have three different Macro lenses) I stopped to move the big 300mm f2 Tamron that I brought home for some tests. When I got that 300mm f2 in my shop I expected it wouldn’t be there for long, but to my surprise there hasn’t been any interest in that lens so home it came.
As I said, I was planning on doing some macro shots, but that big 300mm would be fun to use. The soft Bokeh (out of focus background) at f2.8 or even f4 it produces is neat and photographing flowers on that wet day with it would be fun.
One might worry about camera shake when hand holding a lens with that focal length and weight, but I set the ISO at 1000 and kept the shutter speed around 1/2400 and moved the aperture up and down from f2.8 to f4 depending on the light.
I could have chosen one of my Macro lenses, or maybe a wide-angle lens. Each of those would give me a different perspective…a different perspective that would completely change how I photographed the plants in the garden. A Macro lens is so intimate. A photographer can get so close and visually say so much about a flower with a Macro lens. But using that 300mm is all about standing far away and stepping forward or backwards to crop only what you want. It’s usually the choice of wildlife and sports photographers that want to capture their subjects at a distance.
One plus is that the long focal length creates a shallow depth of field that blurs the background, (with this f2.8 lens the result is a wonderful Bokeh) and it is that short depth of field that makes it so much fun to walk around my yard with.
I photographed flowers, chickens, and cats waiting to go inside. I also made a portrait of Jo sitting in her black Dodge Challenger. Then walked out to see Jo’s husband feeding their horse and as I did, I saw their dog Odie and called him so I could photograph that big silly boy running at me.
I know I was out there to photograph the wet flowers and I did get some good flower portraits, but my favourite is that big mastiff running at me. That long lens gave me the distance to let the running dog move into my lenses view for some successful shots.
It’s a good time to get out in the garden or just walk around the yard photographing anything that looks interesting on a spring day. Sunny or rainy, it’s always a photographic adventure.
Stay safe and be creative. These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net.
