Grass

jcdeboever · Jan 5, 2017

Playing around with taking an ordinary, everyday visual and make it something else. I totally forgot about this Hedgcoe project where the goal was to shoot ordinary things in a creative manner, using as much of the environment as possible; color, light, pattern, and pushing hardware. D7200 with Sigma 105. Additionally, I was trying to figure out a way to have less jittery bokeh from the lens. Fast shutter speed 1/2000 and stopped down to f/11, had to bump the ISO up in order to get the correct exposure and speed.

SquarePeg · Jan 5, 2017

I'm surprised to see you shot this at F11, I would have guessed a much larger aperture because the DOF seems fairly shallow. At that shutter speed it isn't motion blur... I like the end product and think this is a great interpretation of that type of project assignment. I know this is in the just for fun forum and you weren't asking for critique but that one blade of grass in the middle of the shot that is going off to the right is annoying.

jcdeboever · Jan 5, 2017

SquarePeg said:
I'm surprised to see you shot this at F11, I would have guessed a much larger aperture because the DOF seems fairly shallow. At that shutter speed it isn't motion blur... I like the end product and think this is a great interpretation of that type of project assignment. I know this is in the just for fun forum and you weren't asking for critique but that one blade of grass in the middle of the shot that is going off to the right is annoying.

No problem with the critique. I just didn't want people to think I was trying to make a great image as it was done for fun and self educational purposes. I cloned it out, better? I have no idea why the exif data is not showing up again. Every time Mozilla updates, it messes that up. It may be my exif extension. I fixed it before but don't recall how I did it.

Derrel · Jan 5, 2017

Yet another step you have taken in your quest for mastery of photographic technique and lenswork! The brief bit of information you gave us gives us insight so that we might better understand what was going through your mind on this assignment. This is the type of challenge that John Hedgecoe's books offer: ways to get out there, and to really have to think about the way the tools actually work! This is quite a study in bokeh, or "the blur" as the Japanese define it. This study has a TON of bokeh, both foreground blurring, and background blurring.

Its important to understand that not every picture made is designed to be "great", and that there really is a need to practice, and experiment, and to try to learn how X works with Y and with Z, and so on. This picture show us how a strong, narrow line goes in to defocus with THAT lens: look especially at the right hand side of the frame. This lens renders OOF solid lines much better than some of the older Zeiss designs, which tend toward double-lining. The color rendering looks warm, looks Sigma-on-Nikon like, which is different from Sigma-on-Canon. Overall, again, another good share from the Hedgecoe books.