Recently I made an early-morning visit to Magnuson Park, one of my favorite sunrise destinations. A bank of clouds blocked the actual sunrise, but I was able to squeeze a few other interesting images out of the morning before the sun came out.
We'll begin with the first images of the morning, which are closeups of a budding lupine plant (I am not sure which variety). In both cases, I used f/3.5 to isolate the foreground as much as possible - I was far enough away from the plants that f/3.5 still gave me enough in-focus detail.
There are a few serviceberry bushes here and there in the park, and they are all budding or flowering. Below are some buds on one of them. For this one, I used f/6.3, because this gave me the right amount of shape in the background elements.
Next are some serviceberry flowers that have actually opened. For this one, f/5.6 gave me the right amount of foreground in focus without creating too much clutter in the far background.
The next image was a bit of an experiment, and I think it turned out fairly well. I used my wide-angle lens with a closeup filter, so that I could focus on the buds (which were quite near the lens) while getting a perspective wide enough to include the trunks in the background. Clearly there's some distortion involved, both from the lens itself and from the closeup filters. But that's part of the effect, and I think it works in this case. I used f/9 to keep the trunks in the background recognizable as such.
Finally, the flowers below belong to what I believe is a black twinberry bush. F/5.6 was the best choice, because wider apertures didn't have enough of the flower in focus, and there was nothing for the eye to lock onto. As you can tell from the background, the sun was now out and getting higher, but I was lucky enough to find a shaded flower.
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