Colours

Clare Topping — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:14:27 +0000

Last year I took a shot of cransebills amongst the alchemilla mollis at Ryton which I was quite pleased with, but it wasn’t quite right. The composition was not quite there and it was not as sharp as I would have liked. This year I went back.

I hadn’t gone with the intention of taking the shot again, indeed I had forgotten about it. But, once there, the photos were just asking to be taken – who could resist such vibrant, clashing colours.

Camera settings were 1/160secs at f/10, ISO200 on my 100mm macro lens.

Dew Drops

Clare Topping — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:00:32 +0000

For some time I have wanted to take a close up, macro photo of dew drops. Shouldn’t be too difficult surely. Well, if you are me, it appears to be incredibly difficult. I think this is mainly because of my love of hand-holding the camera rather than using my trusty tripod. This has evolved from a desire to get close to a subject and to move round the garden as the mood takes me, using a tripod is difficult in a small garden that has plants everywhere and is about 25% pond.

Anyway, unlike most of my attempts at dew drops this has come out pretty sharp (although I have sharpened it a touch in Lightroom). What I liked about this however, was not the dew drops, pretty though they are, but the shadows they cast on the other leaves. The drops at the top and bottom of the picture are linked by an s-curve, and the picture retains a degree of simplicity by the fact that there is only one type of leaf and only one colour against a black background.

I decided to make the picture a little more abstract by cropping out quite a lot of the picture.

This picture was taken handheld using my EOS 400D equipped with macro lens, ISO200, 1/125secs, f/13.

PhotograClare » alchemilla mollis

Colours

Dew Drops