A walk through my garden

"Practice"  is what is needed to improve and to discover the in's and out's of creating an interesting photograph.  I enjoy what I am doing and hope one day to create that "wow" in my photos.  I spent a couple of hours out in the garden "practicing" and look forward to getting out again soon.  This is my favourite time of year and I just love photographing the tulips.

I was able to get out to the Arboretum as well which was nice. I was so surprised at how far along some of the plants were as I had been there about two weeks earlier.  It's so amazing how quickly things grow.  I have to make a point of going weekly to enjoy the changes.

Walking through the gardens I noticed that the Canada Geese had their babies with them.  They we so cute and fun to watch as they devoured the dandelions.  I should bring a few home to work on my front lawn.

For the love of flowers

I working on improving my skills with flower photography.  These past couple of weeks have provided me with  the opportunity to test some different techniques.  It's been an interesting journey. I feel I am improving but have a long way to go.  Ralph gifted me the Dirk Ercken "Flower Photography" course which I have been watching and practicing.  The techniques seem simple enough but putting them into practice isn't always as easy as it seems.

I've been a regular visitor to the Arboretum and found some good flowers to photograph.  I got pretty dirty shooting these as they were really close to the ground.  I'm not sure what they were but the flower was really interesting and I liked the added "bug" close to the stamen.

I bought a bouquet of tulips to practice with at home.  I also added a perennial poppy and practiced some of the new techniques.  It's a really interesting concept requiring a visit to the "fabric" store to purchase various colours of tule to help with the new technique.

A few of us went to visit a tulip farm in Fenwich which is close to Niagara.   It's a photographers "dream come true" area.  There was so much to see and take pictures of.  These are a few of the ones that I shot.  I absolutely loved this garden and plan to come back again next year.  There were over 2 million tulips planted here.  It was so amazing!!

The ticket for our visit to the tulip farm provided us with "10" flowers that we could pick and bring home.  Teresa and I picked the same colours (I added a few more) and brought them home and placed them in vases.  The farm recommended that we add ice cubes to the water and also to trim off an inch off the bottom of the flower.  It worked very well.  Teresa and I have been comparing daily how the flowers are doing as we picked them well before they were ready to open.  These will have a beautiful orange center.  I can't wait.

Overall I am pleased with the photos and the progress I am making.  I look forward to photographing my garden next week where the tulips and other spring bulbs have started to bloom.  

The art of creating dreamy flowers

I've been doing a lot of reading to educate myself on how to create a dreamy looking flower portrait.  Surprisingly there are only a few photographers who have posted the technique to follow so I am learning by trial and error.  I have watched a few youtube videos as well and am contemplating signing up for a Photography course to learn more.  For now, I'm experimenting with what I have read and anxiously waiting for the fields of flowers to be in bloom.

I have some tulips in a vase and a group of flowers blooming in my garden. I started with the vase as the weather wasn't the greatest outside.  I used a black poster board as a prop.  These pictures are a series of the same photo that have been blended together to create a full shot that is all in focus regardless of where you look.  It can large number of photos and in these cases there are as many as 15 - 50 photographs which are then imported into Photoshop and "aligned" and then "stacked".  I enjoy doing this and it's good practice but it didn't give me what I was looking for. When doing this it also creates "huge" files and often my computer is unable to handle them.  I have to get creative to find ways to transfer them and use a separate hard drive for this purpose.  While I liked these,  I wanted something that was more "dreamy".  So it's back to the drawing board.  

The flowers in the garden are really pretty but they are very low growing to the ground forcing me to lay on my stomach to photograph them.  I tried using a tripod and it doesn't work as it's really important to position the focal point directly on the desired area in the photo.  I pulled out my yoga mat and a pillow to help me lay on the ground without agitating my shoulder too much.  I was pretty sore by the time I finished but it's good practice and right now gives me something to do to amuse myself.

The following photos are getting closer, but they're not quite there yet.  I need to better understand how to get that "blurred" look in the foreground and have some beautiful bokeh in the background.  I'll keep trying.

I practiced a bit today again in  between services.  I still have some more learning to do but I'm slowly seeing effect that I am hoping to achieve.  I want to go to the Arboretum this week to try my luck with the daffodils.  

While I was laying on my stomach "manually" focusing on the flowers, I got photo bombed by and ant and a bee.  Hah hah, it added a bit of excitement for me to see them.  I didn't quite have the right shutter speed for the ant but I still thought it was pretty fun to see.  The bee stuck around for quite some time gathering up the pollen.  I'm always happy to have them in the garden.