Last Saturday, I braved the threat of an advancing rainstorm and made a photo expedition to Discovery Park in Seattle. Indeed, it did shower while I was there…but mere showers are no match for my grim determination!
One of the first things I noticed while walking through the park was that the thimbleberry bushes are now blooming. When photographing flowers, I usually set the focus point to be on the flower's interior; but this time, I decided to try focusing on the petal. I used f/6.3 to preserve a bit of context.
The two images below are of fireweed leaves. Yes…we're getting close to that time of year again! For the first image, I was so close that I had to stop down all the way to f/18 to get the level of background shape that I wanted. I wanted the stalk to be perceptible. When I shot this image, I actually walked several steps away and used my remote; this reduced the degree to which me and my equipment were reflected in the droplet.
The next one uses a slightly more backed-off perspective; I was able to open up to f/6.3 and still have the leaf shapes perceptible.
Below is a Robert's geranium, again featuring some water droplets. Apparently Robert's geranium (or Herb Robert) is a noxious weed, but it's sure a pretty one! It was actually raining when I made this image, but trees overhead sheltered me from the worst of it, and I was thus able to shield my lens from any stray raindrops that made it through. I wanted the shapes of the leaves in the background to show up, so I used f/13.
Below is a group of newly emerging lupine leaflets holding some water in the center. I saw this feature on a lot of lupine plants but especially those that had newly-emerging leaves. F/3.5 for maximum selective focus.
The new growth and baby cones below belong to a pine, shore pine I am guessing. I thought this scene stood out strongly from the dark green of the needles. F/3.8 for maximum background blur.
There are a lot of lupine plants growing around the beaches of Discovery Park, and they are just starting to bloom. Both of these following images have a similar concept - focusing on the lupine in the subject, with the gray waters of Puget Sound in the background. I used similar apertures - f/5.6 and f/4.5, respectively - to blur the Sound and the background flowers/leaves.
Below is a pea flower of an unidentified variety (I did not have my book with me); I experimented with a variety of apertures but settled on f/13. This, I think, provided the optimum balance between selective focus and a reasonable amount of shape and texture in the flowers and grass in the background.
Finally, a shot of some flowering trees in the North Bluff area. I tried different aperture approaches, but settled on f/22 to keep everything in focus. The toughest thing about this image was waiting until all the branches in the foreground had stopped moving; at a shutter speed of 1/3 second, even slight movements blurred them.
Other Things
Below is a closeup of blooming red elderberry in Saint Edward State Park. I used f/8 to preserve a bit of shape in the leaves in the background.
Below is a blooming bigleaf maple in Animal Acres Park in Lake Forest Park. I used f/22 to keep everything in focus.
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