Weeds in the garden

Forget-me-not ... I can never remember ;-)

Well, not all shots in this post are of weeds, but there are a LOT of weeds in my garden so I suspect it's fair to say the majority of flowers are weeds!  Problem is, if left to their own devices there'll be even more next year and the year after!

After my previous post regarding large apertures I thought I'd have another play with images shot with the lens quite open.  The first shot was actually taken at f4 and at 200mm.  When you're quite close to the subject the depth of field is significantly less than when you shoot something far away.  The problem I wanted to avoid was not getting all of the flowers in focus, hence an increase in aperture to f4.

The second shot was also taken with the 70-200mm zoom, but this time at f2.8.  These particular weeds are under a cherry tree with a wall and apple tree behind.  Using a wide aperture disguises all these other garden features and focusses your eye on the flowers ... well, I suspect just one in particular!

Cineraria come in a variety of colours and I suspect we have each colour in our garden!  The third shot was again taken at f2.8, but this time at 70mm.

Lovely blue cineraria.

Purple cineraria.

More detail on the purple cineraria.

The fourth image in this post was taken at f4, but with a 200mm focal length.  Of shots three and four I think I prefer number three.  Perhaps let me know which you prefer.

Besides all these weeds there are some other flowers in the garden.  Apple blossom and clematis appear on the remaining shots in this post.  The apple blossom was shot at f2.8 at close to 70mm but the clematis was shot at both f8 and f2.8.  Maybe see if you can determine which shots was shot at which aperture?

That's all for now.  I'd better get into the garden as I've heaps of weeding to do!!

Apple blossom, 70mm (ish) at f2.8

Clematis up against the wall.

Clematis ... again!

Big Apertures.

Rain drops on the washing line.

Just experimenting with lenses wide open again.  It's quite interesting how great the effect can be on just how much of the image is focussed and discernable.  Take the first shot for example.  Almost everything is blurred except for a few water droplets towards the centre of the image.  Click on the photo to get an enlarged view.  I've always found wide apertures and shallow depth of field to be interesting.  Perhaps it's because your eye never seems to do this.  As soon as you look at something it's automatically focussed, so even though there is some blur away from the centre of your vision you never seem to notice them being "soft".  As soon as you look at them, they're focussed.

Somewhat rampant ground cover under the washing line #1

Somewhat rampant ground cover under the washing line #2

Clematis, but this time in colour

In a photograph, however, you can look at all the objects in a scene in which some are focussed, and some are not.  This allows the photographer to emphasise certain objects not only by position, but by selective focus also.  The following two images may give an idea of this.  Please click on an image to get an enlarged view.  Certainly in the second shot below there's one flower that catches your eye because it's the only one in focus.

The last shot for this post is of the Clematis on the run down fence.  Aperture was now at f4, but with a longer lens and shortish distance between flower and lens there's still a pleasantly shallow depth of field.  Enough of the background is focussed for you to appreciate the context in which the flower exists, but it isn't such as to overwhelm the main subject of the image, the Clematis flower.

A little bit of cropping.

Clematis climbing over an old fence.

I'm often somewhat frustrated my my inability to crop images yet retain good detail in the cropped photograph.  These two images are a good case in point.  The first image was taken with the longest focal length that I have, 200mm.  I can get some contrast detail between the flowers and the fence, but I would have liked to get a bit closer to the flowers to emphasise their detail and structure.

I often like to get an overall image of the plant, and then more detailed shots.  However, when the overall shot was taken with the greatest focal length lens that I own, the only other option available to me is to upscale and crop.

This is where the second image comes in.  The second image in this post is a crop of the flowers you see in the first shot.  Nothing else changed, yet it seems a totally different image.  Something to consider perhaps before you trash your image is that with a simple crop you may have something rather more pleasing to the eye.  Just a thought :-)

Crop of first image to present more detail in the flowers.