WHAT I'VE MISSED: 28 August 2009. After a lapse owing to changes in my personal life, I returned today to spend some time on my hobby of Natural History photography - and I was reminded of what it is that attracts me to it: quietness; distancing from hustle and bustle and concern with the external aspects of life; stillness; the feeling of peace and oneness with Nature; wonder at the intelligence at work in it; the feeling of being part of something much bigger, deeper than yourself.
FUNCTION OF THE TRIPOD. The processes involved in this kind of photography and their effect of slowing one down I find therapeutic. So I almost always use a tripod in such situations – the tripod reduces the speed of the process which then becomes much more than simply pointing and shooting. You have time to consider the light: direction, angle and strength; the best camera position; the lens-to-subject distance; the best aperture, shutter-speed and framing to achieve what you want. And you can think more clearly about all these variables when your camera is sitting there on the tripod. You can alter it's position for effect and it will 'stay put' while you attend to other things.
CREATING THE IMAGE - Though the image you want to achieve is already in your mind, the difficult task is to alter the variables to produce that potential image "in camera" – so although we often speak of "capturing" reality in a photo, it is in fact much more than simply "capturing" what is "out there" – Rather, it's a creative act - an act of 'creating" in camera the potential image that is already in your mind - an image which may be subtly different from the three dimensional reality in front of the lens because of the variables you have tweaked to mould it. It's the process you go though to achieve this that is slow, considered and measured, and that therefore allows you time to soak up and take what is there - the subtleties of the natural object in the relation to it's environment: shape, colour, texture and structure. The slow, methodical, thinking and physical processes relax - And after the 'click" of the shutter when you eventually see an image appear on the LCD screen that encapsulates just the effect you were trying to achieve, there's the release of having achieved it. There is a lengthy, leisurely process of thinking and adjusment that is going on, getting all the components into place as you gradually approach the task of materialising inside the camera the image that at first was merely in your mind's eye. I often discard several images of a subject "in camera" before obtaining the one or two that I eventually keep.
FACTUAL/TECHNICAL INFO: Though not scented, the flowers of Hibiscus can be visually quite stunning if you are fortunate enough to be able to photograph them in directional low-light conditions like these. Here the camera is positioned to take advantage of the strongly directional light coming from the right and slightly behind the flowers and thus catching the face of the flower on the right at an oblique angle and lighting the flower on the left from behind, partially filtering through its petals and highlighting the veined structure of both blooms and giving a degree of rim-lighting against the dark background provided by a backcloth to isolate the subject.
Nikon D300; Lens: 105mm Nikkor; The camera was set to record the image RAW and this was later converted to JPG format. For some reason some of the EXIF data was not embedded into the RAW image but I used an aperture of ƒ36 (minimum for this lens) to ensure as great a DoF as possible for this close-up shot and the exposure was consequently l-o-n-g, something like 2.5 to 3 secs. It was therefore necessary to use a tripod. Image cropped to square format on the computer. Date/Time/Location: 28/08/09; 11:47:59; Oradour Fanais, in the Charente, France.
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A DEDICATION: I'm dedicating this, my first natural history shot for many weeks to a life-long pal, a friendship going back to school days, because it is his birthday today. So - HAPPY BIRTHDAY 'ADE' - taken specially today to wish you well, so have a great day and many happy returns!
