Since it was dark and I was using the macro lens, I had the tripod out.  Yes, I was attempting to do things correctly.  After cranking the aperture wide open to blur the background, I thought I’d try something else and go the other direction – want to see more?  I, personally, think it is worth hitting the link.

So if the shot above was 1/2 second at ISO 200 and the aperture wide open (f/2.8), what happens when I crank the aperture down all the way to the other direction and drop the ISO to 100?  Well at f/32 and ISO 100, the shutter speed drops to 30 seconds.  That might be fine and dandy, but should give roughly the same picture, plus a little noise and blur.  What it does let you do is screw around a bit.  I happened to be holding a big flashlight I’d been using to add enough light to get the focus right before.  What happens when you spend a couple seconds in the middle of the exposure pointing it at the middle of the flower?  You get something like this:

Ooh… nice colors, right?  Draws your eye into the middle where everything is nicely illuminated.  Pretty different picture.  You could do it again – shine the light around the edges instead of the middle:

Sure, it was quick and dirty so it’s illuminating everything a bit, but it’s mostly around the petals.  Different colors pop out, but since it’s a long exposure and a flashlight bleeds light everywhere, it’s still a soft color.  I think this is my favorite of the three.  The point is, if you look at the junk laying around, especially in indoor, low-light pictures, you can do some cool stuff.  Just make sure you keep the ISO speed low and the aperture small so you have enough time to play.  On a shorter exposure, not only do you have to work faster, but the things you’re doing influence the picture more so it’s easier to “mess up”, if you can even say that about something like this.  Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the result.  You can get a lot of mileage out of some dying flowers.

Lighting Can Be Cheap is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Also, I’m going to try something a little different here.  Thanks to the wonderful features of Photoshop CS4, there is a built-in flash-based panorama generator. Want to see it, click the link.

Same image below – scroll with the buttons or the mouse.  Which is better?  Let me know in the comments.

Tulips As Far As Your Panorama Can Pan is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

This one comes from my 100 mm macro lens.  I love the shallow depth of field, which devolves into solid pink.  On the Digital Rebel XT I shoot with, you’ve got to multiply the focal length by 1.6, so I have a 160mm lens which means I was probably 5 feet back from the flower in question.  With overcast sun shooting at ISO 200, you still have plenty of light to freeze any movement in the breeze, but late in the day or inside, this isn’t the perfect lens for hand-held shooting.  Sometimes it’s nice to try to figure out what else you can do with the lenses you have.  Macros are great up close, but that’s not all they can do.

A Storm of Pink? is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

I suppose my problem with the “festival” is that it is really a group of totally independant farms that allow you to traipse around a bit, possibly buy some popcorn or tulip postcards and charge you four or five bucks to park.  I’m not totally knocking it though.  This picture comes from a farm that proclaims itself as “Tulip Town”.  They grow tulips of every color and looking out over all of the rows, I can’t really think of anything else like it.

Washington Does Tulips is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Every year I forget how miserable I get when the sun never really comes up in the morning.  We call that half of the year winter.  I also forget how much I like it when spring starts showing up.  It was sunny for the last couple of days around here (if you ignore that rain last night) and I think spring is coming.  I dug back in the vault and pulled out this picture from a couple of years ago.  Old camera, old lens, appologies and all that.  The colors are great and the scene is cool, but my favorite part is the rows.  Rows and rows and rows.  I’m sure it’s an OCD thing.

Spring Is Coming. I'm Pretty Sure. is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures