A visit to the local nursery for macro photography - Part II

This is a continuation of last weeks post (with a fireworks post in the middle), showing images from my visit to a couple of the local nurseries in the area.

Numerous people asked me about the permissions needed and the access to the nurseries. I also wondered if I was going to need to call them first to get approval. As it turned out, I just drove over, grabbed my camera and started shooting images. Nobody seemed to care, and I even had a couple of the employees direct me to some unique flowers. You may want to check with your local nursery before making a visit, but I honestly don't think they mind us appreciating what they have at their places of business. You might even want to give them a shout out with your images. For me, I would like to thank both Yamagami and Summer Winds Nurseries for letting me photograph at their locations.

Once again, using the Canon 1DX and Canon 100mm macro lens, I decided to get down low to this flower, thus emphasizing the amazing colors and pattern in the center. This was photographed at f7.1 so that all parts of the flower would be in relatively good focus, but still separate from the background.

Here is another flower photographed the same way (low and straight on).

This is the same flower as above, but photographed directly from above. Notice how different it looks from the previous image! This is a really good example of how your shooting position can show the same object but draw the viewers attention to something totally different.

There are lots of other objects in the nursery and I thought that this mirror ball was interesting.

When I walked around, looking for interesting "subjects", I tried to find interesting clusters like this one. Shooting this at f6.3 and moving myself to show some greenery at the bottom of the frame, I was able to highlight the overwhelming colors and patterns in the pedals of these flowers.

I knew that there would be other creatures interested in the flowers, and took a little extra time to focus on them.

This is a crop of the previous image, showing you how macro can show things that most of us never see. In this crop, you can easily see the pollen that the bee is collecting.

Simple, but pretty...

A burst of red (photographed at f4 to highlight just the center of the flower).

Luckily, right as I was photographing these flowers, I was joined by a hummingbird. I quickly reframed and shot a couple of photos of my new friend.

In the past, I have photographed these birds at a slower shutter speed to blur their wings, but since I had my ISO up to 800 for shooting darker objects in close, and did not have time to change my settings, I ended up with a shutter speed of 1/2000 when focusing on the hummingbird. This was the first time I have photographed these super quick birds and frozen their wings.

As I was exiting the nursery to head home, I saw this group of gnomes and had to take a photo. I figured that it would make a suitable ending to the blog. Even if you take photos of your local nursery and don't get any images that you like, you can always photograph the gnomes. :)