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:
- 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.
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:
- 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.
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