Up close and personal
I first became interested in photography as a spin off from my first love as a kid which was butterflies, moths and all manner of other creepy crawlies. I still find the 'macro world' fascinating. When you stop and look closely at the flowers and insects around us, you realise there is an awful lot more to them than we notice from a quick glance.
It was a lovely day here in Blackpool today but sadly I had to stay indoors doing chores, waiting for a parcel and also waiting for a plumber. What to do? Inevitably photography was foremost in my mind but what to shoot? The answer was literally staring me in the face. We had just bought some fresh Gerberas and if ever there is a flower that is just begging to be photographed, it's the Gerbera. The Gerbera is so striking both in the variety of colours and colour combinations but also because of the complex structure of the flowers themselves. Armed with my trusty Nikon D750 and Sigma 105mm I set to work. I would have used my new Nikon D810 but only just realised that the remote release fitting on the Nikon D750 is completely different to that on the Nikon D810. Why can't they standardise on fittings? It's incredibly irritating but that's a story for another day and another blog entry.
This brings me nicely on to the subject of equipment.
As with my tulip photos, (see my earlier blog entry),
I used a white sheet as a distant backdrop along with the continuous lighting system I have and the Nikon D750 with Sigma 105mm attached, tripod mounted. I shot at a very small aperture (f/22) to maximise depth of field and to eliminate camera shake, I utilised the mirror lock up feature of the camera and released the shutter with the aforementioned remote release.
A great way to spend a couple of hours and I hope you like the results.
