Frosty Spring

I made an early-morning swing to Discovery Park yesterday. On the one hand, my pictures were not quite as successful as I would have liked in some respects. On the other hand, I was a bit adventurous and was pleased with the results given that I was pushing my boundaries, even if only slightly.

1) Pictures of frosty red flowering currant buds
I took these just before sunrise, which is something I usually don't do with close-up photography due to the long shutter speeds required and the possibility of slight breeze ruining the photo. I knew, though, that the frost wouldn't last long on these little buds.

Of all my tries, these two were the best. Neither is ideally sharp, but both are within an acceptable range. Also, in the second picture, I had been hoping to move the point of focus a bit closer, i.e. to the closest extension of the bud cluster. None of my attempts to do this worked, so I posted the best of those with the farther focus point. It's not perfect, but I think it works okay.

2) Backlit flowers
This is actually the same bush that I shot backlit last time I went to Discovery. This time, however, there were flowers on the branches, which I think made the shot much more interesting. The background is a bit dark, but that can be remedied somewhat, although the picture is pretty high-contrast and some blacks might have gotten lost. Also, I would want to tweak the white balance to bring out the green of the leaves more, I think. This could also be remedied, particularly since I have a copy of this image in RAW format. (Been busy lately and still haven't mastered editing in RAW. But we'll get there!) I like the composition, although the dead space in the top left and especially bottom right corners is unfortunate.

Next time, I will obviously better attend to white balance in the field. Also, I might try getting closer to a flower or group of flowers.

3) Flowers - worm's eye view
This one needs some work. The first thing you will notice is that it is way dark. But there isn't too much contrast in the picture, so this will be an easy fix. I stopped the aperture down to F9 and still the depth of field was quite narrow. There's a bit more definition in the background than is ideal, but for the flowers' sake, I wouldn't really want a depth of field much narrower than this. I think this is a concept worth trying again sometime. In the picture below, my composition wasn't fantastic - what you see is a vertical crop out of a horizontal picture! And it still has a bit of dead space at the top. Maybe with some creative cropping (along with the brightening) this picture could be fully salvaged. Still, I think it's a good start.

In other news, in a few days we might get another cold spell with snow levels at 500-1,000 feet! NO! I am so done with that winter weather nonsense! That would have been okay in early February, but not now!!