#435. Autumn Otus

Dec 13

Not every country is so lucky as to have lastingly gorgeous Indian summers, and fireworks of gold and copper foliage. In the Paris region, for example, autumn weather tends to be overcast with dull grey clouds and quite a bit of rain. Not the best weather for photography. So what to do? Go inside, young man! A previous post with Pascal (before he turned and betrayed photography for a dish of Korean lentils) showed an amazing place, the Museum d’Histoire naturelle, and its spectacular animal skeletons.

But not everyone is so lucky as to have such a museum close by, so what to do? Here are some pictures with commonly available flowers: anthurium, and poinsettia. As it happens, I shot them inside the greenhouse of a botanical garden, but shooting them in the totally controlled environment on one’s home offers just as much potential, if a bit different. And don’t forget, water droplets look gorgeous on flower shots, so don’t shy way from watering the flowers just before a shoot.

Once that is set, you can do variations. More background, or less background. Colour, or B&W. All in-focus, or lots of bokeh. You get the gist.

As suggested by Pascal (before he turned and… yadda, yadda, yadda…), do try to exhaust your subject. Change the point of focus, etc..

For the technically-minded, all shots at f:2.8 with Zeiss Otus 55mm on A7RII. No macro, no tubes, no massive cropping, no wide open aperture. Nothing any very good 50mm couldn’t do, and there are quite a few of them.

For some reason, in that set, black and white seemed to work rather nicely, don’t you think?

Now for some with less background. Actually almost no background at all. That is done by picking a composition where there are no lighlights there, defocusing what there is with a wide aperture, and then some PP.

Then there is nothing wrong with getting just a wee bit lucky, like this leaf that obligingly rested on top on the poinsettia…