Scenes from the Yard

Once again I found myself seeking a photo opportunity for this weekly endeavor on Saturday

morning, the day before my usual posting.  My daughter, Katie, is in from Seattle for the weekend and an excursion to some location or event is not in the cards.  She requested an opportunity to try my smoked ribs for the one meal that she will be able to share with us and that takes up a majority of the day due to tending the smoker and monitoring the temperature.

Yellow blossom from hanging plant.

I started out the day with the intent of documenting the whole process but was not very happy with my initial pictures of preparing the ribs.  As I was lighting the charcoal for the smoker box, I noticed the hanging plants that Amy put on the deck and decided to go a different route for pictures.

I swapped out my 24-70mm lens for the 105mm macro lens and mounted my Nikon R1 flash system to the lens and returned to the deck for some fun.   My first inclination was to shoot pictures of open blooms straight on to get the stamens and the petals (the flowers are relatively small, less then the size of a dime).

Hosta plants covered in morning dew. 

 I had done this before and my results this time were uninspiring because of that "been there done that" feeling.  I then noticed a couple blooms that were still not completely open and I decided to take some shots of them from the side instead of down into them.  I ended up liking these shots a lot more.  I spent quite a bit of time on the yellow plant and then took just one shot of a similar bloom on the red plant and that one shot turned out to be my favorite.

Citronella plant with water droplets.

After shooting the hanging plants to my satisfaction I began to look around for something else to shoot.  I leaned over the railing of the deck and looked down onto the array of hostas that we have lining our lower deck.  The large leaves of these plants were still wet from the heavy rain we had Friday afternoon and evening and this coupled with the coloring and shapes of the leaves made for an interesting photograph as well.  The uniqueness (for me) of this shot had it contending for top honors this week but I like the red blossom too much to bump it off top billing.  Sticking with the water on leaves theme I also grabbed a couple shots of the citronella plant that was right next to where I was standing.  By this time I knew I had some material for this weeks blog and was having fun finding material that caught my eye to photograph and was once again feeling the benefits of committing to this blog of getting the camera out and practicing the art.

Spirea blossom taken with flash.  f29 @ 1/60 sec 105mm lens ISO 100

With the macro lens still attached I walked around to the front of the house where we have an array of spirea bushes that were in bloom.  The flowers on these bushes are just OK to look at, nothing spectacular, but like a lot of things when you look at them with a macro lens everything changes.  I took a few shots with the flash powered on and the camera in aperture priority to maximize my depth of field.  The resulting picture was very interesting in that the exposure was such that the background beyond the plant remained black due to complete under exposure.

Spirea blossom without flash f5 @ 1/400 sec 105 mm lens ISO 800

For a contrasting shot of the same part of the shrub I powered down the flashes and adjusted the exposure to bring the silky out of focus background back into play.  I took all these shots this week hand held as I did not have the time to get the tripod out and setup each shot appropriately - the ribs were waiting to go on the grill.  Revisiting some of these, particularly this last one, with a tripod would be the right thing to do for even better results.  In either case I hope you enjoy this weeks shots.

Extreme closeup of spirea blossom with water droplets still on.

Taken with the camera resting on the ground with a flash.