Natural Inspiration

Flower Photography

While I was preparing the photos for this post, I was reminded of a flower photography book on my bookshelf that I eagerly purchased over a year ago but still have not gotten around to reading and enjoying. The book is Botanical Dreaming: Using Photoshop, your camera, and your heart to create inspiring images, by Mark S. Johnson.

The title of the book truly reflects the feeling you get from viewing Mark’s flower photos — they’re dreamy and ethereal. His photos are simply exquisite — far beyond any flower photos I’ve ever produced. I do hope to make time at some point to delve into Mark’s advice and tips for shooting flowers in a fresh, new way.

For more info on Mark’s work and to see more of my recent flower photos, please continue to the NEXT SECTION. CLICK for more flower inspiration

When Our Photos Disappoint Us

Great Expectations

Several days ago, in the Someone’s Story post, I mentioned visiting a broom sage field one morning that was bathed in golden sunlight.

In the scene above, I was attracted to the tonal and color differences between the bright broom sage in the foreground and the dark forest in the distant background, as well as to the difference in the focus between the foreground and background.

The small range of in-focus area in the broom sage was due to using a nearly wide-open aperture on a telephoto lens. Admittedly, it’s a little hard to distinguish the details in the relatively small version of the image shown above.

Reality

Later, as I reviewed the images I’d taken of the broom sage, I was somewhat disappointed in them. There were aspects of the shots that I liked, yet none of the images really wowed me.

But being disappointed in one’s photos at times is to be expected. When we’re out taking pictures, we often have tucked away in the back of our minds a grand image that we hope to capture. And quite honestly, there’s sometimes a huge chasm between what we’ve envisioned and the photos we actually end up with.

I have a few other thoughts on why our photos sometimes disappoint us. CLICK to read more on the photos that disappoint us.

Photos Within

Surprise

The surprise discovery I referred to in the earlier post, Before the Lights Come Down, was finding that there were actually several distinct photos within the initial photo that could stand on their own. This photo is from the lower left-hand portion of the initial shot. If you’d like, take a moment to click on the link to the earlier post so you can compare the two photos.

During the process of photographing at Shallowford Square, I simply didn’t see the additional photos that existed in portions of the scene. But, of course, I had gone to the Square with the intent of shooting wide shots — as many as I could in the rapidly fading last light of the day.

The other photos that I discovered within the initial photo focus on narrower portions of the scene. Please CLICK to see the other photos within the photo.