Lupine

Copyright Nathan Montgomery, 2008

Of my ten favorite shots from the workshop, this is one of two that I think I might have been able to take before Sunday. The flower is called lupine, and there are wild varieties blooming right now in Oregon. I'll post a second tier shot featuring the wild lupine eventually. The flowers in this shot are a domesticated variety from a lavender farm just below Mt. Hood. I'll post a number of shots taken at or near that farm. It was about as beautiful of a location as one could imagine.

To me, what makes this shot is the combination of the green foliage and the purple flowers. It's a nice color combination. My instructor thought it was one of my four best shots. I don't really agree, but I think he liked it because it was a different shot than most people take at the farm,

In terms of the technical details, I took this shot on a tripod, with camera on aperture priority. My aperture setting was F9, and the focal length was set to 22mm. I underexposed by a third of a stop to add a little detail, and I increased my ISO setting to 200. I let the camera meter automatically, which was probably a mistake, but I don't think it ruins the shot. In photoshop, I just tried to back off the shadows in the shot (it was a very sunny afternoon), and I sharpened the image just a bit.