A second look at lupine

Copyright Nathan Montgomery, 2008

Like the shot I posted two days ago, this is also domesticated lupine from the lavender farm below Mt. Hood, and this is also one of the just 2 shots in my favorite 10 that I may have been able to take before the workshop. Here, I've zoomed in on the top inch or so of the plant. Photographers call shots like this "macro photography" to emphasize that you are zooming in on a small subject. I like macro work, because it challenges you to see things in a way that you don't normally look at them. Typically, we'd look at this entire plant, not the just the top inch of a flower that hasn't finished opening.

I like this shot for several reasons, but one is the background. I think I got the depth of field right where I wanted it here, and it left us with this very interesting purple and green blurred background. The subject is pretty enough, but the background makes the shot.

Technically, I shot this shot (and all shots with green or blues) with a circular polarizer to pop the colors. I zoomed in as much as my biggest lens would allow, set the aperture to F5.6 (to blur the background as much as I could), set the ISO to 400 (because the plant was dancing a little in the wind), and underexposed by 1/3 of a stop. As with the other lupine shot, I used automatic metering, which is really inappropriate here, but to be honest, this was early enough in the workshop that I still wasn't comfortable metering manually.