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Welcome to the Nature Stock Photography Library featuring thousands of royalty free and rights managed wildlife and nature photos. You can also purchase fine art nature prints to decorate your home or office. If you are having difficulty seeing the homepage graphics, you are welcome to start with our index page. |
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April, 2007 - In the Field - Photographing a Daffodil Farm
Although the rest of Canada is still digging itself out of snow, spring comes pretty early for Victoria B.C., my home. There are several daffodil farms near our airport and I spent a day taking pictures.
I started out taking pictures with my 300mm lens. I was able to selectively focus on several flowers, but I wasn't really able to get a shot that showed the expanse of the field -- which is pretty incredible. I then tried a standard "wide angle" - a 17-35mm; however, as with all wide angles on Nikon digital cameras, it cropped my 17mm to 28mm so the effect wasn't as good. My pictures were simply looking boring... until I put on the fisheye.
The 10.5mm Nikkor 2.8 fisheye is one of my prize posessions. I've won a few awards with pictures taken with this lens -- a lens that turns generic subjects into works of art. It's amazing to see the world through such a wide angle and I loved that, by putting my lens inches away from a single flower, I was able to a) selectively focus on a flower and b) still show the vastness of the daffodil field.
Although the rest of Canada is still digging itself out of snow, spring comes pretty early for Victoria B.C., my home. There are several daffodil farms near our airport and I spent a day taking pictures.
I started out taking pictures with my 300mm lens. I was able to selectively focus on several flowers, but I wasn't really able to get a shot that showed the expanse of the field -- which is pretty incredible. I then tried a standard "wide angle" - a 17-35mm; however, as with all wide angles on Nikon digital cameras, it cropped my 17mm to 28mm so the effect wasn't as good. My pictures were simply looking boring... until I put on the fisheye.
The 10.5mm Nikkor 2.8 fisheye is one of my prize posessions. I've won a few awards with pictures taken with this lens -- a lens that turns generic subjects into works of art. It's amazing to see the world through such a wide angle and I loved that, by putting my lens inches away from a single flower, I was able to a) selectively focus on a flower and b) still show the vastness of the daffodil field.
I shot close to 100 pictures, mostly with the fisheye. Some I shot just for myself, to experiment and see what would happen. Unfortunately, the Nikkor fisheye does not have a filter thread so I couldn't put on a polarizer. As you can see, it was a pretty bright day. I decided to expose for the flowers anyway and play with levels and curves via layer masking in Photoshop. It turns out I didn't really need to do too much to the sky - nothing really blew out. Although it was sunny, I pointed my camera just to the left or right of the sun and it allowed the sky to expose pretty much as it looked. When I got home all I had to do was view the pictures and decide which ones to include in my nature photography stock library.
I shot several pictures with various audiences in mind. Here's how I approached each audience:
One thing I had to tackle was that there was an ugly highway off in the distance and I didn't want it to show up in the pictures. Depth of field usually helps with this, but in some cases I wanted a narrow DOF to show depth to the image. This forced me to lay down and look up at the flowers, which looked super interesting with the fisheye lens. I love it when challenges turn into opportunities.
Daffodil season is now starting to wind down and the wildflower fields will soon be blooming. I plan to go out this weekend and see if the fields are full of purple flowers down near the ocean. I'll write an update with new photos when I visit.
I shot several pictures with various audiences in mind. Here's how I approached each audience:
- Magazines - I tried to take several vertical compositions so there would be enough room at the top for text.
- Advertisements - Some businesses like to use seasonal imagery to say "Spring is here!" so I took some generic pictures of plain old daffodils and a few pictures of daffodils with the fisheye that looked a little surreal -- something to grab the attention of a viewer, where the perspective is different from the standard/norm.
- Editorial - I also considered that people may purchase the images for editorial reasons, again with the thought "Spring is here."
One thing I had to tackle was that there was an ugly highway off in the distance and I didn't want it to show up in the pictures. Depth of field usually helps with this, but in some cases I wanted a narrow DOF to show depth to the image. This forced me to lay down and look up at the flowers, which looked super interesting with the fisheye lens. I love it when challenges turn into opportunities.
Daffodil season is now starting to wind down and the wildflower fields will soon be blooming. I plan to go out this weekend and see if the fields are full of purple flowers down near the ocean. I'll write an update with new photos when I visit.
You can find the rest of the daffodil farm pictures at http://www.naturestocklibrary.com/keyword/daffodil/
Gallery pages:
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All images are copyright 2007 Christina Craft of the Nature Stock Photography Library. For more information or extra help, please contact 250 475-9268.
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