The Flower

This photograph was taken in the desert garden at Huntington Gardens, Pasadena. I was trying out a macro lens that I had rented for the week. This was a pretty small flower that the macro lens managed to make look a lot bigger. The part the photograph that is in focus is called the "Depth of Field". By setting a large aperture, which confusingly is the smaller f-number the lens aperture can be set to (in this case f2.8) as opposed to a small aperture which is the larger f-number (this lens goes to f22), you can decide which part of the image is in focus. This technique allows for some creativity by blurring the background and the foreground to make sure that the eye is drawn to the part of the image that you want a viewer to see. If you were photographing a landscape scene the desired effect would be to have everything from front to back in focus, this would mean setting the lens to use the smaller aperture, which is the larger f-number. That all sounds very confusing and believe me I was for years, but after some practice and viewing the results it began to all click into place and change the way my photos look.

I have a different version of this photograph that I processed with a different piece of software, click here to see it.