Up Close

You can probably tell that I’m enthralled with my new, spendy, close-up lens by now, but I find it fascinating to put it on the camera and go out and explore a whole new world.

Perhaps I’m merely indulging some childhood fantasies about becoming a biologist and spending my life studying plants. Perhaps I’m compensating for the fact that I never had access to one of those high-fangled electron microscopes that allow you to see the beauty at a microscopic level.

For whatever reason, I find being able to blow up a flower the size of my thumb into an 11 x 14 print enchanting, so I guess you’ll be seeing a few more of these for awhile, at least until I tire of my new toy.

Besides, I think it’s amazing how beautiful these plain-jane looking flowers are when examined closely, all the more remarkable when you consider how many of them there are.

4 thoughts on “Up Close”

  1. I like your closeups. I like the wildflowers I don’t remember from the NW.

    Important thing is that you enjoy what you’re doing.

  2. Strictly speaking, many of these aren’t “wildflowers,” Shelley, and since I live so close to the park and its “gardens” I wouldn’t count on any of them qualifying as a wildflower, Shelley, except, of course, for the pretty obnoxious weed the county agent told me to destroy before it spread.

  3. I thought you must have some new lens or camera equipment to produce all the extreme close-ups that have appeared since the re-design. Then I thought perhaps they’re courtesy of your newfound photoshop skills. Glad to know most of it’s camera-based. What kind of camera and lens are you using? Digital or analog? I only ask because I’m thinking of moving beyond our simple point-and-shoot toward something more versatile, and your photos are always so lovely.

  4. I’m using a Canon Digital Rebel, andru. Generally, just use the lens that came with the camera, as it’s a nice compromise between a close up lens and an all-purpose lens.

    I just bought a Tamron 90mm 1:28 Macro 55 lens to improve my ability to take closeups.

    I’m still using Photoshop to tweak almost all the shots, though. I purposely underexpose all my photos by one stop, a technique I learned in a Photoshop book for using the RAW setting on the camera. An underexposed negative is more apt to contaon information that you can bring out through digital manipulation.

    I also apply selective sharpening or blurring using Photoshop to emphasize the main subject, thought the new Macro lens takes care of much of the blurring automatically.

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