Now you have to deal with it too :-).
It was a hot morning in the tea house and I couldn't resist the sheer overblown quality of this cactus's flowers
Now you have to deal with it too :-). Light through a gap in the clouds after the rain; it's all about the light.
Such a common plant but so amazingly beautiful. So beautiful and alien these structures and also surprisingly difficult to photograph well.
Getting the tone accurate in post-processing and dealing with the depth of the elements during the taking are the issues; but I'm happy with this result. Using my 10 year old D200 Nikon and my 25 year old 50mm Sigma macro. At lower ISO settings this combo performs to my complete satisfaction. I've been a bit distracted from posting recently but will be fixing that soon :-) We have a number of these small magnolias growing under larger trees.
Nice early Spring colour and interest and they're happy in part-shade. When black is an intrinsic part of an image you have to underexpose even when using sophisticated 'matrix' metering.
It's important to have a camera body that allows you to bracket deeply and also gives you quick button-and-dial access when faced with challenging lighting or when you want to stamp your own taste on an image. Reason enough to love the old D300 Nikon. In the southern hemisphere 'Christmas Elf" flowers very late; often indeed into winter.
I took this with another lens I no longer own; the classic Tamron 28-75mm f2.8. It was the oldest version without the built in focus motor (gold on black lettering) and was an extremely nice lens. I sold it for a good profit (I'd bought it with a film body cheaply) but still kind of regret it. Nice filtered light, even at f11 the Tokina 90mm macro is showing it's smooth out-of-focus gradation ('bokeh').
Mind you softer light is your friend for this type of rendering. I feel this lovely lens tends to be a little 'cool' in tone, but nothing that a slight tweek in photoshop can't remedy. |
Roger
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