11 September 2010
Ingrid is growing these spectacular flowers just outside our back door. They are on shoulder-high stalks.
How should flowers be photographed? I made the choice here to do tight cropping using a closeup lens to stress the beauty of the bloom itself. But there is no context, so the viewer is left without any reference. I like being able to see things in close-up photographs of flowers that are hard to see with the unaided eye.
One of the big challenges with a flower like the dahlia is its 3-dimensionality. With many flowers, one can shoot a closeup from a position that is perpendicular to the main plane of the petals and have most or all of the flower in focus. With a dahlia, there is nothing close to a flat surface and so only parts of the flower are in focus.
Here are the last of the dahlia blossoms, photographed on 16 October.
2 comments:
The first photo is marvelous -- the pattern on the petals, the "guarded middle", the shadows of small petals on larger petals.
Charlie
Dahlias are my favorite flowers, and I wish I could be home for just a moment to see them. Can you send me a picture of them in context, so that i can see them against the house and picture what it looks like to be there? Lex
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