A BIT OF MACRO

We've been traveling a lot over the past several weeks, and I haven't used my macro lens in some time.  So I returned to the Mitchell Domes to see what might be new and to do a bit of close-up nature photography.  Here is a little of what I shot.

The first shot is of a couple of flowers that seemed to be in a struggle for room.

These daisy-like flowers posed a depth of field problem.  The flowers were quite "deep" from the tips of the pedals to their centers, and I couldn't keep everything in focus.  So I chose, instead, just to keep the petals in focus.  This was an exposure of 0.8 second at f/40.

I was drawn to the following fern leaves for the one leaf that had apparently met with an accident.

It also helped that some yellow flowers beneath the fern provided a uniform colored background.  This was shot at f/16 at very close quarters, which kept the leaves in good focus but let the yellow flowers a couple of feet below blur out to create a uniform background.

A cactus about 18 inches across provided a nice abstract, and I turned it into a black & white.

A new plant in the tropical dome caught my eye.

Each of the oblong, purple-tipped "buds" was about an inch long.  I thought the primary colors gave the plant a clown aura.  I needed to tone down the intensity of the red; otherwise, it lost definition.  This was taken at extremely close range at an aperture of f/51 with a 6-second exposure.

I also came across some large and very yellow lilies.  Although the stamens and pistil were interesting, the flowers were large and those features created very serious depth of field challenges.  The back of the flowers, on the other hand, were relatively flat and much easier to capture photographically.  So that's what I did.  Here are a couple of the images.

Finally, I liked the following mums, primarily for the crisp and stark contrasts they provided.

The only problem perhaps was their hideous color.

John