Jubilation

[Julie Kenward]

Another crop of daffodils broke ground this week so color me happy! :D:D:D

Canon 40D, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro
f2.8 @ 1/320th, ISO 200
Manual mode, pattern metering
Handheld, natural light, Shady WB
Processed in ACR & CS4 - WB adjustment, levels adjustment, slight crop, noise reduction & sharpening

[Ed Vatza]

Very pretty, Jules. I love the color and the detail you were able to capture in the petals. Background is very nice. Excellent job here!

[Gus Cobos]

Well composed and executed Julie. I like the the soft off image of your flower in the background. The depth of field is dead on and the color rendition is very good...I like it...congrats...:cool:

[Anita Bower]

Jules: You have a gift for getting the focus of your images in sharp focus, even at f2.8!! I love the composition, with the parallel stems and the BG flower looking away. The plain BG works beautifully.

Did you take this outside? If so, how did you get that uniform BG?

[Julie Kenward]

Anita, I did take it outside. The flowers were in a vase on a table on my deck. The BG that you see is the composite wood decking which is normally a gray color but it had a bit of blue to it in the afternoon shade. I had to use a shallow DOF in order to keep the details of the decking from coming through and I tried several different settings from 2.8-5.6 but liked this one best.

I think the key to getting a good DOF on such a shallow aperture is to get in exactly the right place with the camera. If you know where you want the focus to be (the inside of the front flower) and you keep moving around your object you will get enough of it in the field plane that the image is possible with the shallower end of the pool. :D It takes more time to set up the image but I love the shallow aperture end for this reason. It really puts the focus right where you want it to be and let's everything else fall away.

[denise ippolito]

Jules, I agree -Very nice and I like the OOF BG.
If you wanted to get picky I think you could eliminate what looks to be a crease on the left of the green stems-but that is no deal breaker here. CONGRATS!

[Ken Kovak]

I love daffodils and I love this image. Can't wait for my daffodils to bud out. All I have is green leaves about 3 inches tall.

Thanks for the explanation on your technique.

Ken

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Love the DOF and it is a reason to celebrate! Nicely framed with the OOF stems in the BG. Thanks for the explanation about how you got the precise DOF Julie. One for the memory bank.