Springtime? Blosomming trees everywhere!

Springtime?

Since I posted about the coming of Fall in NM, it only seems fair that I should herald the coming of Spring.



A few more from my backyard here.

I went back to the river the other night for some shooting, but things didn't really work out all that well. It was a nice evening, but the only clouds were way off to the north so I had essentially featureless skies to work with. Not bad for showing a leafless cottonwood, but it still looks very wintry. Soon the trees will be budding out down there (the river valley tends to be a little cooler) so there will be some color.

Unfortunately spring in NM means wind, which it looks like we'll be blessed with for a couple of days. One can't have everything....

Aaron

The color of the branch set this picture right from the start. A wonderful plum color!

With that and the OOF b.g. the blossoms are set very well.

I would have liked to have seen a into a flower, but hey, I'm asking a lot. Interesting hairs on the petals! I wonder what they are for?

Would be interesting to see what these look ike in UV light! what insects like may not be what we like!

Thanks for sharing. I look forward to seeing a burst of blossoming trees from all over!

Asher

No other takers, I guess. Just for Asher:



The 24-105 is only a so-so macro lens. Perhaps I'll go the cheap route for now and get some extension tubes to allow closer focusing. I understand this lens actually works well for macro when reversed. I suppose I should be checking the Macro forum more frequently....

Aaron,

Remember, you had the snow first! I'll go out hunting blossom too!

Asher

Bring it on!

While I'm here, how about a couple more highlighting the lovely bokeh of the 24-105? I really do like that lens.

I rather like this one:


This one I'm not as fond of and I'm trying to figure out why. I think it's the branch dropping out of focus so quickly or the fact that I placed the bloom so close to the bottom of the frame (no cropping off the bottom). I'm tempted to call it painterly but I fear the wrath that will bring....


C&C welcome as always.

Aaron Strasburg said:

Bring it on!

While I'm here, how about a couple more highlighting the lovely bokeh of the 24-105? I really do like that lens.

Click to expand...

Personally I find the boke a bit strong and would like the background a touch further from the subject to kill those blur circles. i.e.,


Albeit, we must live with what we can get. i.e., (strong boke)


Another example where the boke is nearly but not quite smooth enough for my tastes:


Anyway, that is a couple Spring flowers for you.

enjoy your day,

Sean

Aaron,

I like #1 the best but would like to see it cropped a bit tighter on top. Unbalanced in that there's so much bokeh above your main subject flower and much less below. There's also a rather bright spot of bokeh that fights for the eye's attention and with a tighter crop the subject will be more centered. Still nicely off-center as you have composed it but better balanced within a more symetrical framing bokeh.

#3 & #4 the focused flower seems to get lost in too much bokeh, too strong a bokeh, and probably most important, too similar a color bokeh to that of your main subject. Your color contrast in #1 & #2 is much more pleasing, isolating the subject flower nicely!

Derek

Ah the spring dance!!

That bee really hag into that flower pretty deep. Wonderful images of spring. The last one is divine!

The middle one is new to me entirely.

Is it hairy plum?

Asher

Thanks guys. Very helpful comments. There are times I wish the 24-105 were f/2.8 both to help smooth the bokeh and for the extra light, but not when I'm carrying it around. On a 20D you're talking a fair bit of weight already.

I will have to be more careful about the background. It's tough when you're shooting a 15' tall tree and don't really want to drag out a ladder just for a better view, which then poses tripod problems.

Anyway, on the the rest of the pics. Sean's last is really quite nice. The green of the new leaf really adds a lot.

Per Derek's comments, a little burning of the background might help in #1. I wanted to keep the leaf and the angle of the branch, so cropping wasn't really an option but a little PS magic is in order. Love the translucent look of the bee.

Asher Kelman said:

That bee really dug into that flower pretty deep. Wonderful images of spring. The last one is divine!

The middle one is new to me entirely.

Is it hairy plum?\

Click to expand...

Thanks Asher. The middle one is a member of the Mint Family. To quote:

I have more shots about if you are interested, but they are more reasonably composed data points showing flower details for an amateur naturalist than anything highly refined. i.e., I have yet to find a composition I truly feel in my soul for this species and so I keep looking.

Aaron Strasburg said:

Thanks guys. Very helpful comments. There are times I wish the 24-105 were f/2.8 both to help smooth the bokeh and for the extra light, but not when I'm carrying it around. On a 20D you're talking a fair bit of weight already.

Click to expand...

The difference between f/2.8 and f/4 at those focal lengths is minor. Just put on an f/2.8 or faster lens and try out DoF preview and you will see it is not enough to matter for most situations. With macro style subjects smooth boke is most easily achieved through careful subject selection and composition. With true macros subjects one can get all kinds of smooth creamy boke at f/10 or smaller apertures.

Aaron Strasburg said:

I will have to be more careful about the background. It's tough when you're shooting a 15' tall tree and don't really want to drag out a ladder just for a better view, which then poses tripod problems.

Click to expand...

Screw the tripod. Yes I absolutely agree they can make for sharper images. But a sharp shot with a lackluster composition version a slightly soft shot that feels good is an easy choice for me (I want the viewer to feel it, not just see some random poorly composed details).

Albeit, when I take a tripod out for shooting it is because I have a flash with a lighting modifier mounted on the tripod (much more stable in wind than light stands) so that I can handlhold at sync speeds and contort my body in to get the composition I want (or try) in rapidly changing situations.

Please note I am not saying do not use a tripod, but as a be all and and all for getting a shot it sucks. I am not that patient. I like to stalk/hunt my insect subjects. I think hunters who sit in blinds up in trees and shoot deer who wander under them are lazy and failing to learn about their subjects. Same thing with photographers. Unless you have a truly dreamy composition composed in you mind and need a subject to complete I think lying in wait is boring as all heck.

For flowers there is little point in a tripod as they tend to shift in the breeze and it is rarely wind free here. The only reason I shoot flowers alone is for compositional practice and data points that may end up in a database someday (the amateur naturalist wanting to tie in species availability data with climate databases to predict when local species are likely about on a computer). I say compositional practice a wild flowers tend to be random so getting a clean composition is at times hard.

Aaron Strasburg said:

Anyway, on the the rest of the pics. Sean's last is really quite nice. The green of the new leaf really adds a lot.

Click to expand...

Thanks. That last one was shot using a small 12x18 inch (or close to it) soft box and a boom arm on a tripod very close to these eye level blossoms. I focused, recomposed, and then used DoF preview to select both the compromise between DoF on the subject and smooth boke on the OoF background. So the entire OoF background was intentional and composed to highlight and make the in focus elements stand out. Some burning in of the background might help, but I rarely bother and move on to the next shot. But I also have RAW files from last Summer I have yet to look at while chasing insects that need review (and lots of deleting except for the ocassional data point image.

Aaron Strasburg said:

Per Derek's comments, a little burning of the background might help in #1. I wanted to keep the leaf and the angle of the branch, so cropping wasn't really an option but a little PS magic is in order. Love the translucent look of the bee.

Click to expand...

I would suggest tweaking the image with curves to gently enhance contrast in the subject while reducing contrast in the boke. Careful selection of image tonality can do a lot without making any localized changes. Or just clone/heal them away (this can be hard if you want it flawless). Another option is to locally blur the image and then introduce noise to keep textures even across the image for strong boke removal.

Or better yet, if you like it keep it and ignore my photographers hyper-picky review of your image <smile>.

some thoughts,

Sean

I'll have to go and look this morning for fresh blossoms, but we've been blooming for quite a while. I posted a sky filled by almond and other early fruit trees a few weeks back. It's #8 in http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2338 . (Anyone know how to post a url to a specific entry rather than to the thread?)

scott

Just use the same reference! But you know that. To remember what you did, find your last post and do a reply with the "quote" option and then copy your previosu image!

Here's the last tree to summon up its courage and get started in our garden. I think it's a pear.





The others are well on to just having leaves and the start of fruits and stuff like that. BTW, I recently purchased Lee Friedlander's Cherry Blossom book. I have to wonder how he got to that point in his visual explorations, but the pictures are quite lovely and take some looking. They were apparently shot quite a while ago on three or four trips to Japan in the 1970s, before he picked up the Hasselblad Superwide.

scott

Asher Kelman said:

Just use the same reference! But you know that. To remember what you did, find your last post and do a reply with the "quote" option and then copy your previosu image!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the repost. I thought that was being a little greedy for eyeshare, but I like the picture.

The question really comes up when there is a thread with some complicated discussion -- like, say, the true nature of painterly drawing, or was it draftsmanlike painting? -- and you want to point to something trenchant that you think you said in the heat of the discussion. If you just cut it out and paste it into another thread it might look pretty silly, you want to take the reader back to the full scene. How do you do that?

scott

Hi Scott,

The point is to have a thread internally poweful and fast so that we don't have to leave. That's why we prefer to have people's pictures embedded here, rahter than going elsewhere so the thread can be followed fast. So great pictures that are worth referring to, should be shown again, but very selectively. One often has fresh material.


Asher

Sean wrote, "I think hunters who sit in blinds up in trees and shoot deer who wander under them are lazy and failing to learn about their subjects. Same thing with photographers. Unless you have a truly dreamy composition composed in you mind and need a subject to complete I think lying in wait is boring as all heck."

I guess there aren't any bird photographers reading this thread. If you can give me some guidelines for sneaking up on a Rock Wren, I'd be obliged. The bird watcher / photographers' mantra is, "Good things come to those who wait." The requisite skill is learning where and when to wait.

Hey, it happens *sometimes*. I sneaked up on a Peregrine once. 'Sneaking' is the wrong term, actually - he saw me all the way, but he was busy dissecting a gull that was too large to carry off. Likewise I have 'sneaked up' on emus and ostriches who really don't care because they can kick your guts out if need be. However, when a bird gets to be smaller than a white-tailed deer, you have to wait for it or have your porter hand you a 30 pound tele lens to get it full frame.

-- Chuck

I agree with Chuck!

Not having long lenses, I'd always try to get to the water hole before the action so that I could be up close. I often pick a doorway or window in street photography that frames perfectly and wait for my subject.

Photography is not only about what's in one's mind but also what isn't. One needs to both include and exclude. This sometimes requires hunting and setting up traps, using distractions, deceit and decoys as in hunting for game or escaped prisoners.

Only, here, the subject doesn't get killed!

May be mad or offended, but still, won't get killed!

Asher

Chuck Bragg said:

Sean wrote, "I think ... is boring as all heck."

I guess there aren't any bird photographers reading this thread. If you can give me some guidelines for sneaking up on a Rock Wren, I'd be obliged. The bird watcher / photographers' mantra is, "Good things come to those who wait." The requisite skill is learning where and when to wait.

Click to expand...

Way too sweeping on my part. More of a visceral reaction from one viewpoint. Hence the "I think"* which is not always right as I am human. I stalk insects. My presence is often disruptive to their arrival on plants, but not particularly disruptive to their preexisting activities on a plant if you move slow and keep your shadow off of them. Using a tripod to get in close and get a nice angle with a simple clean background scares the subject off. Many species also have hunting/nectaring patterns that they repeat. So I find walking a loop from popular plant to popular plant and stalking the little beauties is way more productive.

I mentioned deer because a hunter can stalk a deer. And one can stalk a yellow jacket. I also have a very short attention span for waiting as I cannot stop thinking and waiting too long changes the topic in my internal dialog which causes my to miss shots. The one I have yet to get to my satisfaction is the bald faced hornet. They are such beautiful creatures. Please note, I do not go near most species nests as bees and wasps can be dangerous and could kill those who are allergic. Those nests I do approach are of species of specifically known character that are allegedly unlikely to hurt me or those that I know will not hurt me as they are not overly territorial. It is an amazing rush like mountain climbing to go to a patch of lavender that has at least 36 bumble bees per square meter and they start crawling on you. That is one of my all time favorite ways to shoot photos and is on par with anything I have hiked hours or days into the woods to find.

So please take this as a reinterpretation of my overly sweeping statement and instead as one of the joy of stalking shots. Properly set up wireless flash with small studio style modifiers on a tripod can solve a lot of problems (I live in a grey and depressing Winter climate a little bit south of the Canadian border so Summer days have long golden hours and Winter days can sometimes yield a dark hour or four without light rain).

all the best, <smile>

Sean


* Some I Feels might have been less grossly sweeping and open to new ideas (which I am)