Flowers, Day One

Messing Around With DOF and WB

Why another post about photography? Because I’m lazy, writing about other serious things will require quite an effort to create a well formulated theory. Not to mention most of them are just the peculiar side of my head, or like Cheiro the astrologer mention “Children of their brain” (“their” refers to me, the 4^th of April born guy). So I think I’ll just enjoy the simple things first. This is what the Taoism called a non-action act, a wu-wei act, or a meditative action.

“Act without action

Do without ado”

-Tao Te Ching

A similar concept to what Mr. Toad has told me about doing things one at the time. Perhaps he’ll write something like “A Toad’s Prayer 3” in the future.

After spending like more than a week in my own garden, capturing images of the same objects for dozens of time from many varieties of aperture, ISO, WB, different angles, and sunlight intensities, I came out with hundreds of photographs. But I’ll start slowly, one post represent one day attempt. As for the day after, I’ll make a different post.

My first attempt is to create a portrait with a shallow DOF (depth of field), to isolate the object that is to be the starring of the image. And my first subject is flowers, red and yellow flower which names I don’t know. Well this is the primary result.

Although it looks pretty fine right on, but at the pixel level (zoom to 100% magnification with your image viewer) I noticed that not all the flower is in focus. I only use 55mm f/5.6 and it seems that the DOF is quite shallow already. The background looks readily blurred, but unfortunately with the expense of some body parts of the main actress is also out of focus. The next image will depict what I mean more clearly.

Noticed that only the several front flowers are in focus, the rest are in misery. But the 2 images above have a 3 dimensional shape, meaning each small flower has a significant range difference, and it is more pronounced by the relative close distance which I took this image (as close as I can get with this lens, that is 28cm). So my next-day attempt will be to capture it with smaller aperture, hopefully with the effect of increased DOF, and get a sharper detail for all the flower, and capture another flower with a more 2 dimensional shape.

This is also the first time I ever noticed the huge difference between different settings of WB. The first picture was taken with the WB set to auto, and here is the same object with more or less the same angle but with the WB set to sunny, cloudy, and shade. By the way, it was about 3 PM when I took those pictures, its cloudy and no direct sunlight.

Sunny

Shade

Cloudy

The shade setting always gives the most reddish color, or what Mr. Ape called “hot” several days ago, which sometimes makes my eyes sore a bit. The cloudy and sunny setting looks better IMO. I think I like the sunny best. The auto setting just looks too dull, but sometimes it does get the job done.

Now the post gets too damn technical. Well, what can I say, during my infantile photographic life, exploring the technical aspect is the basic requirement. Great photos are about artistic soul, momentum, and luck. But when the opportunity does come, or the artist of your brain gets the tickle, you would want your photographic skills as superb as you can get, not to mention having the suitable equipment required to capture that specific moment. So be enthusiastic, be aware, be diligent, and be rich. PTT salary, here I come. :D

NB: any tips about uploading image to Blogger?because I'm not quite satisfy with the resolution they provide.