Watch with me

Lame title, I know. Anybody knows the name of these babies? Shot in the garden.

For the gentle price of 6.50 euros.

To be honest, though I took this pic in our garden, I’ve no idea about the name of this little flower. As so many in my archives I really need to ask the landlord all the names of his flowers. But it has the form of a clock, right? Oh come on!

We got nice orchid flowers from Martine last week when they were at our home. I love shooting flowers, so here we go!

I set the plant next to the window put a chair with a black sheet of cotton draped over it behind the orchids. This makes the beauty of the flowers really stand out.

Some moderate post-processing is done in Lightroom. I often apply a split toning on my colour pictures. It is an easy way to give your photo’s a nice atmosphere.

All pics were taken with the Canon 17-55 f2.8 at f2.8, fully zoomed in. I used to take my flower pics with my 50mm f1.8 prime, but it can’t focus as close as the 17-55. I tried the 50mm for a couple of shots, but quickly switch back to the 17-55. I like this lens so much, I’m thinking of leaving the 50mm at home for the next vacation. Except for a bit of CA’s the 17-55 is absolutely superb!

Passion flowers. I just love them, they are so fabulous and beautiful! The garden of our landlord is full of them (and many other flowers). It’s an absolute joy to go out and shoot there.

The background is a sheet of black cotton my girlfriend is holding up for me (thanks for that honey; you see it was worth the fuss ). It’s a tip I got from Scott Kelby’s book The Digital Photography Book and it works for almost all flowers.

I do my flower shots mostly in aperture priority mode at around f2.8. If it’s windy I switch to shutter priority, around 1/500 (I know that such a short shutter speed, will open up the aperture anyways, but’s it’s to absolutely certain to have a fast shutter speed that I switch to shutter priority).

This is a shot from yesterday. After shooting trains, I went a little further down the canal to catch some sunsets, but unfortunately the sun was setting behind a thick pack of dirty clouds. Slightly disappointed, I biked home, but luckily, I spotted a small field with some poppies. The light was very subtle and warm and I unpacked my tripod again, to shoot the nice landscape in front of me. Setting up the tripod behind these little flowers wasn’t easy, though. If they hadn’t been growing on a big pile of sand, this shot would have been impossible. So the lesson I learned yesterday: always take a small table tripod as well (if you have room for it in your bag)!

Let’s kick off this brand new blog with a beautiful water lily I shot last weekend in the pool of my girlfriend’s garden (well basically it’s her landlord’s garden who lives above her ). It just stopped raining, so the flower was half closed, but the the raindrops on the leafs give the picture such an idyllic look. During the summer I’ll post probably a lot of flowers from that garden because it’s such a beautiful with so many interesting flowers. I must admit the landlord takes good care of his garden.

Shot with my 50mm f1.8 lens in aperture priority f5.6 and -2/3EV exposure bias because it was very cloudy. Most of my shots are taken with this 50mm prime. I’m looking for a second decent lens though, which I plan to buy shortly. But I’ll ask your advice on that later.