Saturday morning marco photo walk

This past Saturday one of the photo clubs I am a member of had a Macro photo walk at a local park. We decided that it should be held at 6:30am so we could get out and shoot before the bugs became too active and the breeze started up. We have several members show and had a good time.

All these photos were shot using my Canon Macro 100mm f/2.8 lens. All of these were shot using natural light.

My first photo from the day is of an orange bug on a yellow flower. I like this photo because of the way the light was on him and the edge of the flower. My setting were: iso 200, f/3.5, 1/100sec

My second photo is of a spider. I like the way he was sitting there with the light hitting him. I would have liked to have taken him from a slightly different angle but he moved when I moved. My setting were: iso 200. f/3.5, 1/100sec

My third photo is of the spider's web. This was a bit of a challenge because I could not get all the web in focus because my depth of field was too shallow and the water I misted it with kept evaporating very fast. My setting were: iso 200, f/3.5, 1/320sec

My last photo is of a bee. He was very active and was a bit of challenge to get one that I liked. My setting were: iso 200, f/5.6, 1/160sec

All of these photos were very minimally edited, most of these have not even cropped.

One photo different edits

This week has been busy and hot so I have been out to take photos mainly in the morning, before I have even had coffee. I decided look at what different forms of editing can do for a photo.

I took this wildflower this week at Lowe Park here in Marion. It is a pink cone flower that is fairly common. The setting for this photo was iso200, f/5.6, 1/100sec

This was the basic image.

I wasn't happy with this photo because the background had too many highlights.

I decided to try Gray scaling the background.

I still wasn't happy with this the background was still too distracting because of the highlights.

I had suggested to me try darkening the background.

This was better but I felt there was too much background so I cropped the photo.

This version of the flower I think is the best I can get this image. I also upped the color saturation a little bit as well. In this version the flower attracts your attention while the background is not totally nothing it does not distract.

How can I improve this photo. There is not much I can do to make this a really good photo but I did learn several things. I will make sure I have a cup of coffee before I head out so I will be a bit more awake.  I definitely will pay more attention to what the leaves in the background are doing in the light. I will set me camera to slightly underexpose the flower so I can do more in editing the photo. I probably would choose I more perfect flower.

Orchids

Reccently I went to a local greenhouse during the week and was able to take pictures of some of their flowers. I usually like to be able to move the flowers around a little so I can get the best angle for the picture but this time I was not allowed to touch at all. So I had to try to get a good angle.

This Orchid photo was one of several that I took. I like how one bloom was in focus with the others less so and the background as totally out of focus. It has to me a peaceful garden look. I had a couple of people suggest that I should have tried a vertical photo. Maybe next time.

The settings for this photo was iso 400, f/5.6. 1/400sec

This next photo is of a Dragon Orchid. I am not as happy with this photo because I could not get futher away from it or an angle that I was happy with. This was one if I could have turned the pot a bit I could have moved a bit and gotten a better photo. Sometimes this is how life goes.

The settings for the Dragon Orchid photo was iso 400, f/11. 1/160sec