Flowers - Natural Light Opportunity

GeorgieGirl · Sep 4, 2011

I have vestibule entry in my house that is white and well lit with northern light. I have had a 60mm lens and I have spend time working with it and noticing the kaleidoscope effects and I am enjoying it. Yesterday I wanted to use the natural light and see its effect. In the end, and after using this lens for a while, I feel limited. Maybe I need to change the subject matter? I'd like more of an abstract in the end, I suppose I could zoom and crop photos to get there...is that what others do? Or should I consider additional gear? What would you suggest I could do to increase my awareness and make this more versatile. I almost feel like the 60mm gets me only half way there...?

I started to lose light and lose sharpness along the way, so I'm disappointed about some of those shots that came later in set up, and I found I also liked some shots better with a higher f/stop; that will be a times saver for me in the future. So here is what I worked on yesterday with my 'natural light room'.

Overread · Sep 5, 2011

Hmm my best advice if you want to take macro into abstract is that you need more ideas rather than, necessarily, more magnification. You would do well to have a look at (and give her a pester) Misheles work :
Flickr: Mishele21's Photostream
the greater part of which (far as I know) is done with a regular macro lens; the main trick being using the lens wide open rather than closed down for depth in the photo. It catches many by surprise because the mantra for macro is small apertures - so much so that some don't even consider using the wider apertures at all.

GeorgieGirl · Sep 5, 2011

Thanks for the link! Gives me some things to consider.:thumbup:

jrice12 · Sep 5, 2011

I think #3 might be a candidate for what you want. I like it. Part of the abstract is to say something more (or different) than what the picture is. Here I see a great deal of coherency (reality) at the bottom-center but as the we go up (and out) the pedals take on a ghostly appearance. This is caused, I think, by backlighting, the focus ( due to DOF) changing and also the change in spacing going up and the revealing of more and more of the pedal body. The pedals tips have a kind of "mouth" look giving them some "animal" look for the bottom but this dissappears going up. The soft, flat, (back) lighting adds to the ghostliness of the top while providing more clarity at the denser bottom. Even the lack of chroma variation hints at "ghosts"... In the end I get a feeling of going from the "Earthly" at the bottom to the "other-worldly" at the top.

GeorgieGirl · Sep 5, 2011

jrice12 said:
I think #3 might be a candidate for what you want. I like it. Part of the abstract is to say something more (or different) than what the picture is. Here I see a great deal of coherency (reality) at the bottom-center but as the we go up (and out) the pedals take on a ghostly appearance. This is caused, I think, by backlighting, the focus ( due to DOF) changing and also the change in spacing going up and the revealing of more and more of the pedal body. The pedals tips have a kind of "mouth" look giving them some "animal" look for the bottom but this dissappears going up. The soft, flat, (back) lighting adds to the ghostliness of the top while providing more clarity at the denser bottom. Even the lack of chroma variation hints at "ghosts"... In the end I get a feeling of going from the "Earthly" at the bottom to the "other-worldly" at the top.

Thank you! Yes, we had a similar impression here at home. And this is exactly where I want to end up by finding something 'alternate' in the ordinary. Its something I want to repeat.

jrice12 · Sep 5, 2011

Just remember that the "alternative" has to still be based on hard photographic principles. Composition, lighting, DOF, all that stuff STILL applies. Try imagining an alternative first and sketch it out to see what it resembles. Then try to distill the important photographic concepts that would be needed to create such an image (are there hard shadows? Lots of color? Is DOF nearly infinite, what angle of view? etc.). Then see if you can find something in the real world that can be made to fit (rather than trying to go the other way and trying to find an alternative to fit the image!). Your imagination figures out the image and then you use your technical skills to achieve that - kind of like a paitner!