Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Hey - It's Almost Spring!

It's a far cry from shooting the Winter Olympics, and a heck of a lot closer to home. Yep, it's our backyard. While I was up in Vancouver, my wife and kids were busy planting new flowers in the yard. As we approach Spring, the flowers are blooming and the bees are out in force. A great time to break out the macro lens and the extension tubes. (Extension tubes extend the distance between the camera and the lens to allow closer focus on nearby objects).

I shot this image at the full resolution of 21 mega pixels with the Canon 5D Mark II. If you were to zoom into the full resolution image you would see each speck of pollen on the face and body of the bee. This guy was nice enough to stay still for a split second with the barrel of my 60mm macro lens shoved almost right into his face.

I was busy shooting the inside of some Daisy flowers in the backyard, but then stopped and noticed the lines of this bloom, not yet fully opened. What attracted me to this particular bloom was the way that the sunlight was just kissing the top of the pedals.

The weather in the Bay Area has been really nice for the past week (while the East Coast got slammed with huge storms - not to rub it in or anything). The Tulips are in full bloom.

It is so cool to use the macro lens and get really close to isolate the stigma of the flower. The colors of these flowers are so amazing. Photographing these images is not too difficult, heck, Mother Nature is doing all the hard work.

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