Onegav

In contrast to yesterdays wide open landscape, today I wanted to capture something more intimate. Something that would look into a smaller world, thats none the less beautiful.

Holly was just about to head off to the gym, so I quickly grabbed my camera and tripod, and headed out into the garden. I wasn’t expecting to find much, to be honest, as most of the flowers have finished for the year.

However, I did wonder if I could capture something like an interesting leaf, or a fern or something like that. I wanted to use my 50mm too, for two reasons.

Firstly, its wide aperture would help me in the low light, and secondly I wanted to see how tight I could take the apeture to sharpen the image, whilst still pulling as much light in as possible.

Anyway, to my amazement I found this single rose sat bolt upright just 20 feet from the back door! I was amazed, because just a few days ago I posted “The Last Flower“, thinikng that would be my last chance at a floral photograph in this 365 challenge. It just shows, you never know whats around the corner……

I ran through a variety of apertures, and todays main shot is at f/4, whilst the shot above is at f/1.8. I used my tripod too, to help counter the low light and slow shutter speed.

Its funny though you know, as much as the tripod really helps to take away any camera shake, using my 50mm in this way feels weird. Using shutter speeds of 1/40th of a second, like some of these shots with f/4, it’s best to use a tripod I find, but the 50mm doesn’t suit it somehow.

It feels like the 50mm doesn’t “like” it, as though it feels traped and overly constrained, like a caged animal desperate to escape! The 50mm is like me, it likes to be wild and free, I think thats why I connect with it so much.

Learnings – a nice change of pace today, from yesterdays dashing around the North West chsing the sun set. I only walked a few feet, and found this proud little flower braving the rain.

Plus, although my 50mm doesn’t like being constained on a tripod, its still great for close up photos like this, and as much as its most fun to use wide open handheld, I like the results with it stopped to f/4, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist its f/1.8 all that often!