Wild Flowers with a Difference.

I often like to shoot wild flowers with my macro lens, in particular the 100mm.  Mostly I find that I don’t shoot a true macro shot, more of a closeup, as getting the flower in frame would often be too big at 1:1.  I normally shoot them on a tripod and prefer a narrow depth of field to them personally.

However suffering from an injury recently I have not been able to carry the tripod and the camera.  So these are shot hand held.  This is not the key difference as for the first time I decided to shoot them with a card bouncing the sunlight towards the camera.  I like the way this has made the shots standout.  I used a series of different coloured cards on two different wild flowers.  I fired a burst of shots at various apertures to get some sharp ones, due to the fact that I was hand holding the camera which introduces some shake along with a slight breeze.  Normally the tripod would remove one of these variants in focus tightness and the shot burst would not be necessary.

To show the difference between the way I would normally shoot a Wild Flower – the first shot is without a card in the background.

  Herb Robert – Natural Background.  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 400 F5.6 1/400.  Natural Light – Handheld.

The following set are all with the cards in the background.

Herb Robert – Deep Yellow Background.  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 200 F3.5 1/800.  Natural Light – Handheld.

Herb Robert – Light Blue Background.  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 200 F3.5 1/400.  Natural Light – Handheld.

Herb Robert – Purple Background.  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 200 F8 1/250.  Natural Light – Handheld.

Herb Robert – Blue Background.  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 200 F4.5 1/400.  Natural Light – Handheld.

Wood Sorrell – Yellow Background.  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 100 F10 1/160.  Natural Light – Handheld.

Wood Sorrell – Yellow Landscape.  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 100 F8 1/250.  Natural Light – Handheld.

Wood Sorrell – Sky Blue Background.  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 200 F5 1/320.  Natural Light – Handheld.

Wood Sorrell – Sky Blue Background (Narrow Depth of Field).  Taken on Canon 650D with Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens.  ISO 200 F3.2 1/640.  Natural Light – Handheld.

I hope you like at least some of them.  I personally can’t decide at the moment which of the colours I prefer the most.