My normal go-to when it comes to most photography is pretty basic: one single subject, clear and in focus, with additional content in the background, foreground, or both, for a sense of time, place and context. This week’s photo, as you can see, breaks that formula in a couple of ways. It was something a little different for me to try, and while I’m not entirely certain about the result, it was fun and I got to get a little creative along the way which I always enjoy.
I shot this picture when I was visiting the local botanic garden on a rainy morning, and had my D750 and 105mm macro lens with me for any photography opportunities I happened to spot along the way. I originally just kind of passed by this flowering plant without thinking too much about it, and also because it was really low to the ground which would have required some odd contortions in order to get an interesting picture. The more I thought about it though, the more I decided to use it as a bit of a challenge and a chance to try something a bit different.
I squatted down on my heels, knees bent, and held my camera out in front of me with Live View enabled and the screen flipped out so I could see it. Newer mirrorless cameras with modern autofocus systems would have had no trouble with this at all, but on a decade-old DSLR with contrast-detect autofocus when composing in Live View, it’s a different story entirely. Thankfully there was no wind and the only real problem I had was my own body wiggling back and forth as I held my camera out. I compensated for this by shooting at f/8 instead of a wider aperture, which would have been possible since all these flowers are basically on the same focal plane, and making sure vibration reduction was enabled on my camera lens. I lined up the shot such that the background was uniformly dark to help make the flowers stand out as much as possible, and tried to get the whole cluster in the frame and not cut off anything on the top or left side. I did end up cropping just a bit in Lightroom, but overall I think it worked out quite well: the light was even, the petals are glistening in the rain, and the vacant background isn’t really a problem. If anything, having other things in front or behind would probably do more to distract the viewer than enhance the photo, and I think the end result works out just fine. It even gives me a few ideas of what I might try with other images too.
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