Photographing flowers

A technique I happened upon a few years ago, and occasionally attempted with varying success. It's simply a matter of opening up your widest lens, setting the focus to manual and adjusting it to as close as possible, and then "dancing" around and through an object. Yes you will get funny looks from people as you move in, through, and around, your subject, in this case blooming flowers. The technique is improved with the use of extension tubes (which I don't own, but do covet) or using a tele-converter, I used a 1.4x for these images. Of the 400+ images I made that day I am pretty happy with this group. A couple I like very much and will add them to my website (still in the works...).



cheers,

Mark

Non Photographic video

This came from a recent blog post from Scott Kelby, www.scottkelby.com/blog, which you should be following anyway and it is funny;



Mark

Rocky Fork, Tennessee

This is my first attempt to post a blog directly from Picasa Web Albums so we'll see how it goes.

These are a few images, actually the only ones that survived editing, from a hike at the Rocky Fork area of Tennessee. We've been eager to get back there and Saturday seemed to work out schedule wise. Unfortunately it didn't work out weather wise, it was a beautiful sunny day and we arrived around 10am and left around 3pm. Practically the worst shooting conditions, except for maybe the middle of the night with no moon. Surprisingly there are a few images that came out alright, the one impressionistic one being my favorite. Mostly is gave me a gave me a chance to find good access points to shoot from when the conditions are better...like an overcast, misty, late afternoon day.