Close Focus Weed

As promised I still have many photos from the weekend, while looking through them I found this one. We had stopped for a quick break in the shade of a tree, while sitting down I saw a small group of weeds. I thought I could create an interesting composition so before we carried on I took a few photos, and I think this one was the best of the set.

To be able to capture the effect that I wanted I knew that I had to focus close to the weed. My standard lens wouldn’t focus close enough to the lens so I borrowed one of Bex’s macro filters; this enabled me to focus much closer to the weed. Also by focusing closer to the weed the depth of field becomes much smaller, this aids the effect I was trying to create. I decided to use flash for this photo because I wanted the inside of the leaves to be illuminated, and I wanted the shadows to be more defined than with just normal light.

The only changes I made during the editing stage was to increase the contrast, the colour tone and the saturation. By increasing the contrast the photo looks more three dimensional than before; and by increasing the colour tone and the saturation the yellow on the weed becomes a lot more pronounced and stands out more from the green.

I like the effect I created with this photo, and I think the editing that I did to the image has improved this effect. I couldn’t have captured the photo without the macro filter I borrowed from Bex though. Between both of us we have a good amount of equipment for almost every photographic situation!

Mat