Project365 - More Colour, Please !

Introduction

In my previous post, I was shooting Pat's tulips utilizing the abundant natural light from our bay windows, and augmenting the photos with some fill lighting - namely my off-camera flash. While the photos were technically accurate, and turned out nicely, Pat suggested they showed too much green, and not enough of the tulips's colour. So here is take two...

The Setup

I decided that I wanted to get closer, so that the blooms filled the frame. Similar to macro photography, I wanted to capture as much of the colour of the blooms as possible. So I outfitted my Canon 60D with my Canon 40mm f/2.8 Prime lens, and augmented it with 12mm extension tube. I shot handheld, so I could move around the vase at will, and used the ambient light as my only source. I started with the aperture wide open, and the ISO at 500, to create a very blurry background, and still allow me to dial up the shutter speed so as to eliminate camera shake.

The Photos

I love the way the open aperture creates a nice, blurry background, so the eye focuses on the bloom. I even managed a little bokeh in the background !

The soft lighting from the windows makes the delicate pink blooms appear to glow.

This photo underscores the issue of having the aperture setting too wide open. The depth of field is so narrow that the petals appear to be soft & blurry as well. Probably should have opened up a little to say f4 or f5.6

Lessons Learned

There IS such a thing as too narrow a depth of field. It made the shots a little fuzzier than I wanted. While I achieved my goal of creating much more colourful photos of the tulips for Pat, I am not overly pleased with the output. But that's why this project exists - to build experience and practice my craft !