Canon 5DMkIII, EF180mm Macro f/3.5L @ 180mm, f/32, 0.5 sec, ISO 200
These small 3/4 inch blooms are great targets for Macro photography. In recent years I have not spent much time doing macros. Macro’s in our garden usually require getting down on my hands and knees or on my stomach to get face to face with the object of interest. I am not as flexible as I use to be and am reluctant to get down in that position. But these jewels just begged me to do it … so I did.
For Lexie: When I take an image, I always try to specify what my subject is. My next step is to enhance the subject as much is possible. Then I try to reduce any clutter that may distract from the subject.
For this image my subject was the “mouth” of the single blossom, not any surrounding petals. To enhance the image I used a 180 mm telephoto macro lens focusing on the interior mouth of the bloom. I used a very small aperture to make sure I got as much of the bloom in focus as I could. In addition, I tilted the camera to get a more interesting perspective of the blossom.
The negative ramification of the small aperture was that I also picked up details surrounding the single bloom as clutter. To eliminate the surrounding clutter, I darkened and desaturated the background in post processing. In addition I added a blur to the mid-ground purple petals.
For reference, below is the SOC version of the image.
