Bluebells ... and black and white

Image #1:  Bluebells with natural colour.

There was some lovely light on the bluebells under the liquid amber earlier today that I thought I'd try a few shots and see what I could do with a black and white treatment of these pretty blooms.

I thought I'd use a long lens as my original idea was to get foreground blooms in focus with a smooth blur for the background bluebells.  I tried this, but felt there was too little contrast and the delicate foreground blooms, whilst sharply focussed, just got lost in the background blur.

f5.6 seemed to give me the sharpness of the bloom I was looking for and using the long end of the 70-200mm zoom helped reduce the amount of background focus.  The idea was to create a black and white shot, but does it work?

I'll post three versions of the same image each processed slightly differently.  Perhaps let me know which you prefer?

Image #2:  Bluebells with increased light in the midtones and dark areas

Image #3:  Goes without saying really - bluebells in black and white.

Sick :-(

Felt rough today, sore throat and bad chest.  Not a happy chappy at all.  Coming towards the end of the day, just as the sun started to go down I went outside with my son to take a few shots.  Can't say these are my best efforts, but I'm sure you'll excuse me as I'm not feeling well.

Orchid(?) on my deck just outside my living room.

The first shot in this post was taken just outside my living room.  These little orchids are very pretty, but the background isn't flattering.  I picked a wide aperture (f1.4) to blur the fence and gutter downpipe.  At least that part of the shot worked!!

Backyard bluebells.

My next shot is of some bluebells in my backyard.  I've been wanting to get a shot of the bluebells where I can give the impression of depth.  I wanted some blooms in front and behind the main subject, but slightly out of focus.  Anyway, what you see is my effort whilst feeling rough.  The light was pretty bright from the right and quite dark elsewhere. The blur is not too bad though. Again a very wide aperture was selected (f1.4).

Shot three is probably my favourite for today.  This was shot by the entrance to by property.  I was shooting into the sun and wasn't altogether certain what type of effect I was going to get.  I'd seen a few highlights behind the 'red hot poker' as the sun reflected off some background leaves, but the flare and rather pleasant circular highlights have turned out much better than I expected.  Shot at f1.4 again, using the Nikkor 85mm f1.4G (dream lens!!).

Red Hot Poker.

After coming inside I noticed a few black dots on the image ... not really sure what these marks are.  I've since cleaned the lens (it did have a few dust specs on both front and rear lens elements) and haven't noticed these marks on other images so am hoping it's not a dirty sensor!  We'll see.  Anyway, what do you think of the shot?  Does the flare work?

Yet another weed!

Last shot in this post is of yet another weed! As you can see, I was still playing with a very shallow depth of field.  Daisy at f1.4 with the Nikkor 85mm f1.4G.  One seriously sweet piece of kit.