A teeny, tiny, 1cm across flower appeared in the yard. I’m sure glad I seeded with pounds of wildflower seeds now!1 The sun was well below the horizon, but I have a Tokina 100mm macro lens on the Z6 so I thought I’d try to get some shots with flash. I’m using my 15 year old SB-800 as commander and a newer SB-700 I got a few years ago. I could do way better if I planned it, and maybe I’ll try again over the weekend. Pop a reflector up to fill in the shadows with softer light, use a tripod for the camera, and all that.
After I got a couple from my field of wildflowers then went to the weeds growing through cracks in the driveway. These are the prettiest damned weeds you ever saw2, with amazingly vibrant red flowers that only bloom at night. They were just beginning to open, and I didn’t get them the real color because the direct light is too reflective and makes the image too contrasty and it fools the camera’s meter. But now that I know how this macro stuff works I can get the softbox/reflectors set, overexpose a bit, and get better shots of them even though they’re not open until it’s almost dark.
These were all taken handheld with the SB700 just laying on its side on the ground near the flower. I focused by leaning in and out (the Tokina doesn’t autofocus on the FTZ) and the results were fun. I rigged this for scanning negatives, but now I think I need to take pictures of bugs or coffee beans or something artsy fartsy3 like that.
Enough yammering. Behold!
1. You may recall, I sowed a couple of 1lb bags of wildflower seeds in the yard. This year’s crop was in an area about 10×35 in the middle of the yard and a 5 foot wide swath along the walkway. The wildflowers were coming up this spring and, just before they flowered, the gophers ate all of them. Right now, this purple thing isn’t my only flower. I actually have one lonely poppy bush that’s flowering in the middle of the yard. Several came up after we mowed the weeds flat and the gophers went back to work. Two made it to the point where they flowered, but one was eaten almost immediately after it bloomed. For some reason, this one poppy in the middle of the yard has been popping off blooms for a week and the gophers haven’t found it yet.
2. These must have escaped from the whackjob’s garden five years ago, but the last two or three years they’ve come up through the driveway joints and grown into shrubberies as large as five feet tall with scores of flowers each. All volunteers. I’ve never planted anything so hardy on purpose.
3. Coffee beans are artsy. Maybe I get a can if kidney beans for fartsy.