Daisies (Updated)

For my first shots of the new year, I bought six daisies from a local market. I then spent about an hour in our kitchen taking pictures, using natural lighting coming through the blinds. For all of these images, I've used a borrowed Canon 28-105 mm lens, shooting perhaps 12 inches from the flower and maxing out the zoom.


The key to this first shot is the depth of field. I shot the image at F14, and it really paid off, as I was able to capture a lot of detail in the flowers. I've cropped this picture to 11x14 format for printing purposes. I actually shot this image on the horizontal but rotated it in Photoshop onto the vertical (feel free to turn your monitor to see how it changes the image). Originally, I was partial to the latter, as I've been told by Jack Graham that vertical images outsell horizontals about 5 to 1.


However, it's always important to take some time away from an image before settling on what to do with it. 24 hours removed from taking the shot, I decided that this really is the best version of the image.


For the third image, I tried to take a more complete look at the flower, although this composition doesn't get the entire bloom (just to keep things interesting). A more liberal cropping of this shot serves as the new banner for the site.


I've decided to go black and white with this last image, though the color version is perhaps equally interesting (and can be seen here by those who dislike black-and-white). The aperture was a bit more open here (F11), which I think gives the petals a soft quality. However, I tried to keep the sepals (the part on the back of the petals that would be green if this were in color) pretty sharp.