At this time of year, purple deadnettle seems to be the predominant plant in my yard, and the speed with which it appears is amazing. One day the yard is brown and showing no signs of life. The next day, it has turned a light purple. It’s an incredible transformation signaling the approaching springtime.
When I saw the flowers blooming in the yard, I had to grab my camera and photograph them. To my naked eye, the plants appeared to blend into one smooth line of color, and that was what I wanted to capture. I took several shots with my 24-70mm lens, but that lens didn’t provide the perspective I really wanted.
I then switched to my 100-400mm lens and took several more shots. Because longer telephoto lenses tend to compress space, I thought I could use it to create the image I was trying to make. But, again, the pictures were not what I was looking for as the flowers tended to separate into individual plants.
I pondered my situation for a few minutes and began to think what it might look like if I got really low and shot through the flowers. I spread the legs of my tripod as wide as they would go so my camera was only a few inches above the ground. Of course, I also had to get low to compose the shot, which meant lying down on the damp grass so I could look through the viewfinder. If any of the neighbors happened to look out and see me, I’m sure they would have questioned my sanity!
Telephoto lenses have a relatively shallow depth of field, and I decided to use that limitation to my advantage. Selecting the lens’ widest aperture, f/5.6, I chose a small line of flowers on which to focus making sure they were completely sharp. This allowed the area of flowers in front of and behind the line I was focused on to blur into smooth curtains of color.
This is not the type of image I typically create, but I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
Settings: 400mm, 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400