Reflections: Front yard Fuchsias.

Front yard fuchsia.

We seem to have rather a lot of these fuchsias in our front yard. They're not particularly dramatic as some of the other fuchsias we have, but they're rather pretty all the same. I thought I'd try a few shots with a longish focal length (somewhere in the order of 200mm) and a shallow depth of field to see what type of shot I could get. I was particularly interested to see how my lens would behave with the bright highlights in the background. Would I get a nice even blur, or would I get lots of bright circular highlights?

The first shot has some quite bright highlights, but pleasantly displayed as circles. Shooting into the sun gives a nice "halo" effect on some parts of the buds and flowers. Compare this with the fourth shot in this post where your eyes are somewhat overwhelmed by the background highlights that it's hard to notice the fuchsia blooms!

The second shot in this post has some more fuchsia blooms in the right of the image, but with a shallow depth of field these have become confusingly blurred. Looks rather smudged and really detracts from the pretty flower to the left centre of the shot. As I look at this image I keep being drawn to the smudge of colour to the right of the image.

The third shot has a less confusing background blur (bokeh). Perhaps not as smooth as I might like, but certainly beter than that in image 2. Perhaps let me know what you think?