ROADSIDE WEEDS

Several days ago, on one of my morning walks, I noticed some distinctive weeds along one of the quiet side roads on my route.  The sun was high enough to be backlighting the weeds, revealing their elaborate veining.  By the time I had finished my walk, the sun had gotten higher in the sky and, more importantly, a breeze had sprung up, making it problematic to try to photograph the weeds that morning.  However, a couple of days later, when the wind was again calm, I decided to revisit the weeds, before my morning walk, armed with my camera and macro lens.

This was a residential neighborhood, and while the weeds were quite close to the street, to shoot the them I technically had to stand in someone's yard.  Fortunately, it was early and no one came to ask what I was doing.  Not having the steadiest of hands, I took most, though not all, of the shots with the camera mounted on my tripod.

The morning was clear, but the sun had not yet risen above a nearby line of trees when I first got to the site.   The sun was not yet backlighting the weeds, and, as a consequence, the light for the early shots was what I would characterize as "flat."  Here is one of those early shots.

1/800 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1000

I worked on this shot for quite a while in post processing.  First, of course, I converted it to black & white and cropped the shot quite a lot.  Then I ramped up the contrast, which served to darken the background.  However, I thought this also made the veining look artificial.  The reason I held on to this shot was because of the strand of spiderweb that I discovered in post processing.  This was also early enough that there were still some dewdrops on the perimeters and in the weed's "crotch."

Once the sun made it above the line of trees, the backlighting of the weeds made a big difference in the overall dynamics of the images.  Here's a somewhat similar shot in terms of composition but that conveys a richer depth, both in the weed itself and in the background.

1/800 sec, f/8.0, ISO 800

Here is another shot in color that also illustrates the value of the having the right light.

1/800 sec, f/8.0, ISO 800

All of the shots were made with my 90 mm Tamron macro lens, which allows me to shoot at a very close range of just a few inches.  As a result, in both of the above shots, the backgrounds are pretty much totally blurred out, despite the aperture being in the midrange of f/6.3 or f/8.0.  That can make it easy to eliminate background distractions.  However, it also means that, because depth of field is so narrow, any significant changes in the distance between the object (the weed) and the camera will be reflected in loss of focus in parts of the subject.  That is why I was looking for weeds that presented a flat surface and tried to position my camera so that it was as close as possible to being perpendicular to the plane of the weed's surface.

Finally, following are a couple of shots taken at a somewhat longer range so as to feature more of the weed.

1/640 sec, f/3.2, ISO 100

1/640 sec, f/3.2, ISO 100

Because the distance between the camera and the subject was greater in these shots, I opened up the aperture to f/3.2 to eliminate any background distractions.  Note that portions of the subject are out of focus because they are not all in the same plane.  This is perhaps most noticeable in the black and white shot where parts of the plant on the left side of the image are curved away.  Even so, I thought the black and white in particular shows good three-dimentionality and is my favorite of the bunch.

One more comment: I probably spent nearly an hour taking close to 100 photos of these weeds.  Because of the morning dew, my shoes and my jeans from the knees down were soaked.  I kept fewer than a dozen photos from this shoot.  Still, I thought the session was a success.