A few (!!) years ago I was given a Nikon DSLR camera for my 60th birthday. For months afterwards I took it everywhere with me, annoying the life out of friends, stopping to take photographs and trying to get everything just right.
Most of them consider me to be a bit of a techie, but I still can’t get to grips with apertures, ISO, focusing and shutter speeds. I even went to evening classes on How to Know Your Camera. Sadly obtaining the correct modes continue to allude me. Whilst I appreciate the joy of finding the uploaded photograph is exactly what I wanted (a rare occurrence) I chicken out and resort to the point and click routine. My iPad and iPhone, with a little cosmetic tweaking courtesy of editing, produce what I feel are adequate but not perfect photographs for my blog. I upload them with the slight disappointment they could be better – I think I am a latent perfectionist.
I have decided after all this time, I will not let my DSLR languish at the back of the cupboard. With Silent Sunday in mind I left my iPhone in the house and ventured out into the garden to practice macros. Actually this was the first time in 4 days I have been out there in the daylight and a lot has happened since then.
What a delight it was to see the beautiful little Iris Reticula, a vivid blue in the sunshine and glistening with raindrops. They are in the flower bed by the house which, when deciding where to plant bulbs last autumn, I chose to pack with spring bulbs. The Iris are the first to bloom and I am hoping that shortly there will be an impressive display of color with daffodils and tulips.
I played around with the ISO, focal length and aperture, without a clue of what I was doing. According to the photo properties the f-stop is f8 and the focal length is 45mm all of which still mean absolutely nothing to me. With a little bit of help using the edit program and the vignette I produced the above.
There is particular Iris I am very fond of and that is ‘Katharine Hodgkin‘, it is so delicate. Unfortunately, only two flowers appeared this year, but they were last years bulbs left in a pot so I was lucky to get anything.
This is another photo of ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ which I played about with and used the vignette mode. I can’t quite work out how to get one photo posted on WordPress as a circular, it seems that you can only do this when posting multiple pics, but if anyone has any ideas please let me know.
Finally, getting a little more confident with twisting and twiddling the lens and buttons on my Nikon I took several photographs of the Hellibores in the garden. I love the circle of little seeds that look like a wreath.
You can see that this post became more than Silent Sunday!
