Although the lake was in a fairly urban location, I was struck by the fact there were still plenty of flowers around and, apart from the noise (and litter), it could have been almost anywhere.  I therefore wanted to take a photo that showed the flowers in the context of the busiest motorway junction in the country (urban flowers feature quite a lot in my 300 photos).  I took a few photos from the grassy bank, showing the poppies with the motorway behind, using both my wide angle lens and my compact camera to try and get them all in.  When asked to see some of the photos by the tutor his first comment was – look at your foreground – and he was right (see photo at the bottom of the page).  This is one of my continuing problems – I focus on the idea and getting the subject sharp that I rely on cropping to deal with anything else, but it does not make for a good photo.  Then, suddenly a lightbulb came on and I saw the photo in my head – use my 50mm lens, get down close to the poppies to make them the subject (rather than the poppies and the motorway) with the motorway just about recognisable in the background to give some context (there is even a truck whizzing by).  We were about to leave the area, so I had to run all the way round the lake, take the photo and run all the way back – and I managed to scrape the skin off my elbow in the process whilst trying to get in close to the poppies.

I am not sure whether this is the photo that he had in mind, or whether using the 50mm lens was the right thing to do (ISO200, 1/320mm, f/6.3), or whether the background should be sharper, but I think the photo was worth it and am quite pleased with the outcome as it was close to the image in my head and a vast improvement on the original concept.

However, what hadn’t been apparent was that the poppies were in the middle of the field, and nowhere near the bits I could get to.  This is the best shot I could get without trampling the farmer’s crops – not really the thing to do.

I decided to make the best of it – the idea was to concentrate on the lonely poppy in the foreground and try to get the blurred poppies in the background to provide a context and a contrast – a single poppy against a mass of poppies.

Things to be improved – many – the most obvious is the seed head in front of the poppy – a pair of shears would have been an ideal addition to my photography kit.  I also think a few more poppies in the foreground would have helped, as would a better sky, it was mainly a sunny day with a blue sky and fluffy clouds, except for the time during which I was taking photos.  Also, more poppies in the background would have been better – or maybe edge to edge poppies – as I was initially hoping for.

In order to actually get anything in shot I had to use my macro lens, ISO200, 1/160secs at f/11.

However, this is one of my two favourites that I took, I will put the other in a another post this week.

The first thing to catch my eye was the light on the petals.  It was a bright sunny day, so not immediately one for taking great photos.  I like poppies, just because they are so bright and in your face as I think this one shows.  I also like the subtlety of the background which is nicely blurred even though it was such a bright day (I kept the aperture smaller by reducing to ISO100).

The only thing I have done to the picture in Lightroom is put it in a square crop which I think works well with such a simple photograph.

I obviously had my macro lens affixed, with the settings on shutter priority to stop me getting carried away and losing photos to camera shake, so 1/160secs at f/8.0 (handheld as would be expected).