Ready to Bloom

Copyright Nathan Montgomery, 2008

This is another flower shot that I took last week in Salvo. I actually took about two dozen shots of these flowers, but most were open blooms. Unfortunately, with the wind, I was stuck with an aperture setting that just wouldn't give me the depth of field I needed to get the long stamen in focus.

At the end of my time in the field, it occurred to me that these younger blooms were the ideal subjects, given the conditions. I do like the subject, but the one real flaw in the image is the background, which is a little too busy. I knew it was going to be a problem, so I grabbed a shingle that I found on the side of the road, and tried to use it to give me a solid background. It was a tricky maneuver, but my camera's 2-second shutter delay gave me just enough time to hit the trigger, get the shingle in place, and then hope that the wind didn't pick up in the interim. Unfortunately, when I got back to my computer, I realized that I'd put the shingle too close to the plant, and rather than getting the dark, blurry background I wanted, I had a picture of a plant that looked like it had a shingle behind it. So... I'm left with a busy natural background instead.