Apple Blossom

My one-year-old Discovery apple tree is putting on quite a show this spring (who knows, maybe I'll even get some apples from it in the next decade!). I thought it would be fun to try get some intimate shots of its flowers. I've over-exposed slightly during the raw conversion to give it the dreamy blown-out look.

Canon EOS-10D, Sigma 180mm, 104mm extension tubes(!), f/4.

Hi Richard

A very arty and attractive image which works very well.

I suggest printing it big as a canvas block print and flogging it down the local art shop.

I am also interested you used 104mm of extension tubes Was there any reason for this, I would have thought a 180mm 1:1 macro lens on a 1.6x crop factor body would get you close enough anyway.

Nice work

cheers

Sean

Hi Richard

Not normally my sort of photography but I like it and agree with Sean's comments!

David

Hi Richard,

I can see where you were going with this, but do you feel there is sufficient depth of field here? I like these abstract images of flowers sepals and stamens and have shot many myself, but I think there needs to be just a bit more DOF because of the pale nature of the colours.

Super flower abstract although I tend to agree that a touch more DoF wouldn't go amiss, even with this very minor nit I like this a lot....

Thanks for your comments all. I think some of the softness of focus here may be motion blur (it was slightly breezy when I took the shot). As for sufficient depth-of-field -- it was a real trade-off between DOF in the stamens but I really wanted the sepals very soft -- it's almost impossible I think to do that without resorting to digital trickery.

Oh well, this was my first attempt at this sort of shot, and practice makes perfick as they say.

First attempt!? Then congrats are in order...