Magnuson Experiments

Recently, I traipsed on over to Magnuson Park, in hopes of a more successful trip than my last. I was definitely more in practice than I'd been the last time (you wouldn't think so, judging from how often I've been posting, but I'm far behind in that regard), so my results were more creative and better executed.

My first idea was to juxtapose an aster flower against the sunrise. Below is the best result. Silhouettes of leaves and branches are visible against the sun; I can't decide if these shapes are interesting or a distraction. The aperture I used was f/5.6. I tried narrower apertures, to increase the amount of the flower that I had in focus, but that made the ball of the sun smaller and not as cool-looking. So I bit the bullet and used f/5.6. I wasn't able to see the flower very well through the viewfinder, and didn't want to spend long looking in the viewfinder anyway due to the fact that the sun was shining through it. Thus, my strategy for choosing a focus point basically amounted to a quick look and guesswork. Thankfully, the shutter speed was quick (1/320 of a second) and I was able to make multiple attempts while the sun was still low and golden.

The next shot is a bit more typical for me; I've definitely used this concept before, but this one preserves more color detail in the flower itself and includes fewer distracting silhouettes behind its petals than my other attempts. I used f/5.6 to isolate the flower as much as was feasible (I could have gone a bit wider, but I wanted to keep most of the flower in focus).

Having photographed aster flowers countless times at Magnuson, I wanted to try some different perspectives on them. Below are my two best. The first combines an eye-level perspective with a partial obstruction of the in-focus flower center with some petals. Ordinarily, I try to avoid obstructing the in-focus area of a flower. In this case, though, I thought it would add some depth and a feeling of intimacy. I am relatively pleased with the result. I used f/7.1 to keep an appreciable amount of the flower's center in focus; I was close enough to the flower that this narrower aperture didn't create too much distracting background detail.

The lighting was more even for this second aster shot due to the fact that the sunlight was filtered through a tree. I wanted to focus on the dewdrops on the petals rather than on the center of the flower, which is my more standard tactic. At f/5.6 - I wanted to isolate the dewdrops as much as I could, in order to bring attention to them - and at a very short distance from the flowers, my depth of field was quite narrow. It was thus rather difficult to set the focus point exactly where I wanted it. Thankfully, I was using a tripod and the flowers were quite still. Therefore, I used this strategy: I'd take a shot, rotate the focus ring ever so slightly, take another shot, rotate the ring again, and so forth. I ended up with four or five different focus points and was able to choose the best. This is the nice thing about digital; I can use this sort of a technique without wasting any film.

Finally, we'll change gears to chicory flowers - which, unlike aster, aren't native to the area but are still very lovely. They appear to close up at night and open up in daylight; thus, toward the end of my morning trip, they were just beginning to open. For the shot below, I stopped down all the way to f/16 to preserve some background detail; I wanted to juxtapose the foreground flower against the flowers, grass, and trees in the background. Not as much of the foreground flower's center is visible as I'd like; otherwise, though, not a bad image.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for a camping adventure!