Sunday, August 10, 2008

The Challenges of Photographing Monkshood

Monkshood, or aconite, is a gorgeous flower.
Whenever I see it I am reminded of its poisonous qualities,
thanks to Ellis Peters' historical detective novel named after this plant.

At Mill Hollow, however, I was concerned with a different challenge:
Photographing it.
I managed to get several different views that I like quite well but it was a struggle.
The long stalks made the flowers bob in the slightest breeze.
And I had a hard time persuading my autofocus camera to focus on the flowers and not the background (even when I put the camera on closeup mode).
The closeup mode gave the flowers such a shallow depth of field that part of the blossom is in focus and part isn't.
Convenient as my small Nikon point and shoot is to carry around, there are times when I really long for my DSLR and adjustable focus.
Nevertheless, after some 40 attempts, I got a few keepers:





1 comment:

Birrd said...

The fourth one is my favorite. Good job!