Easter Lily

Well, it’s no longer Easter by the time I get around to writing this, but I do have an Easter Lily picture to share. This is a close up of the stamen and pistil of an Easter Lily, taken in a home arrangement at my mother’s house. This was taken with available light, so it’s a long exposure – 1/6 second at f/11 (ISO 200). It’s also a macro view of the flower, using a telephoto lens instead of a macro lens. In this case, I used my Tamron 28-300 mm lens at a focal length of 168 mm (taking the picture from about a foot away). All of this requires a sturdy tripod – trying to do this handheld would have created a lot of camera shake.

Red Tulip

Not content just to have Easter Lillies, however, I was in a veritible flower garden in my mother’s kitchen. Here’s a few pictures of tiger lillies and tulips. The first is a close up of a red tulip, also taken in available light. For this picture, I used a smaller aperture (f/22) in order to get more of the picture in focus. The small aperture allowed me to get the outer edges of the tulip in focus, as well as the stamen inside the tulip. The tradeoff, however, is a much longer exposure time, in this case 4 seconds.

Tiger Lily

Next we have a Tiger Lily, again a close up using available light. What’s interesting in this picture are the drops on the pistil (if I have my flower parts correct, which I probably don’t). Even with an aperture of f/11 (1/5 second), there is a very shallow depth of field – the pistil is in focus, but the petal behind is slightly out of focus.

Tulip Garden

Finally, I have a picture of the red tulip flower arrangement, placed in front of a painting of a window pane. The painted window pane gives the illusion of a a spring setting behind the red tulips – giving it a little more interest. The thumbnail view of this picture looks poorly composed, since it forces the picture into a square format. With this picture, however (as well as the rest in this post), clicking on the picture will give you an expanded view that shows you the original composition.

I hope you enjoy these harbingers of Spring – it can’t get here soon enough!