It amazes me sometimes the things that will catch my eye for no apparent reason. It’s especially interesting that you can I by an area, sometimes more than once, and suddenly notice something I’ve not noticed before even though it’s been there the whole time. But, it’s those little surprises that make photography so interesting.
The little flower petal is a case in point. A few weeks ago, I woke up to find a light fog had formed overnight. Not about to let the opportunity pass without my at least trying to make some images, I quickly got dressed and headed out the door.
The only problem was I didn’t really have a plan on where I wanted to go or what I wanted to photograph. Knowing the foggy conditions probably wouldn’t last long, I was in a bit of a photographic panic.
I finally decided to make a visit to Holland Bottoms Wildlife Management Area. Being only about a fifteen minute drive from my house, I thought the fog combined with the wooded area would make for some great photographic opportunities.
I left the house right 7:30 completing a very short errand along the way. As I made my way to Holland Bottom, I realized the fog was beginning to lift. By the time I arrived at the parking area just before 8:00, the fog had mostly dissipated. But, since I was there, I figured I might as well walk around and see what I might find.
We’d had a fair amount of rain the day and night before, and there was a great deal of standing water in much of the bottom. Much of it was too deep for me to do anything but walk along the trail, which was pretty muddy itself. Occasionally, I would see something, and I would grab a quick shot knowing I wouldn’t be pleased because I could get into the position I needed to be in.
Keeping my eyes on the ground, I would walk a few feet, stop and look around for anything of interest, walk a few more feet, and repeat the process. I walked about a half-mile of the trail like this before deciding it was time to call it a day.
Turning around, I walked about 150 yards when something finally caught my eye. It was this little flower petal. It couldn’t have been more than a few inches long, but it’s bright orange and yellow colors stood out in stark contrast to the dark leaves it had fallen on. Looking at it, I could not figure out how I walked by it the first time and never even saw it.
I had my 100-400mm lens attached, but I was worried it would not provide enough depth of field to make sure the whole petal was sharp. The entire petal needed to be sharp, or the picture would not work. I set up my tripod and positioned the camera so the sensor was as parallel as possible to the plane of the petal. I closed down the aperture to f/25, crossed my fingers, and pressed the shutter button. Looking at the image on the back of the camera, everything seemed to have worked. But, I knew not to get my hopes too high until I could look at on my computer.
When I got home and opened the file on my computer, I was very pleasantly surprised. Everything had turned out almost exactly as I had hoped.
As I studied the picture, I realized the background was somewhat problematic because it was a little lighter than what I wanted. I took care of that by spending some time in Lightroom darkening it so the little petal would really stand out against it.
The other small issue with the background was there was just too much of it, and it felt like the brightness of the petal was being overwhelmed by the dark background. Looking at the composition on my camera, that didn’t seem to be the case. But, looking at on my computer, it was unmistakable. To solve this issue, I simply cropped out about half the background to end up with this final image.