Flowers in the garden, April 2023

Using a ring flash in dentistry was second nature. Having learnt how to photograph the teeth and other structures around the mouth, macro was second nature. There were two good mentors to my macro photography. A medical photographer at Wordsley hospital. I can not remember her name and Wordsley hospital is no more. However she instilled a discipline and love of macro photography. Then there was Mike Sharland at Birmingham Dental School. He set up your camera and showed you how to gently rock back and forth using manual focus. The settings were Manual Flash half a second, aperture f/22, shutter speed 1/200s and an ISO 100. These are your go to settings and then you can experiment from here.

Flowers in the garden, April 2023
Close up of a wild Daffodil.
Flowers in the garden, April 2023
Wild Daffodils
Flowers in the garden, April 2023
Hellebores.

Gardens are just great places for macro weather you want to photograph flowers or insects such as bees and butterflies. I dusted off my macro lens with ring flash and wandered around the garden. For this series of photographs, I find the way that the subject is illuminated and the background is dark attractive. There is little in the way of distracting background around. Hope you enjoy these photographs of flowers. By the way, if you are like me and do not know the name of the flowers then there is a very good app, PictureThis, that takes a picture and hey presto the name of the flower is revealed.

Flowers in the garden, April 2023
Daffodils and Hyacinths
Flowers in the garden, April 2023
Common Hyacinth.
Flowers in the garden, April 2023
Grape hyacinth.
Flowers in the garden, April 2023
Forget me not (Siberian bugloss)

Finally a big shout out to @hortihenleygardening for their work in my garden.

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As the University of Birmingham locked down so did Winterbourne house and gardens. There was still a small team of gardeners tendering the gardens during lockdown. As the restrictions eased, the gardens reopened to University staff on the 6th July. It is one of the perks of working at the University that you have free access to the Botanical gardens. I took the opportunity on a Friday afternoon to visit Winterbourne and it coincided with a break in the weather. Yes, the sun was seen in the sky! I brought along my macro lens and decided that it was going to be a close up day photographing the flowers and some of the friends that visit them as well.

A zoom of colour!
Nature’s helper
Prickly
Summer in full swing

I realise now that what I enjoy about garden photography is the symmetry of the flowers. Also I like the asymmetry that is overlayered on the symmetry. The colours and the flower arrangements right down to the petals play a part too.

Symmetry and colours
A busy bee
Lilies in the sunshine

Winterbourne has different areas to it and there is a brook at the bottom of the hill with an Japanese oriental garden. On the way down, there are many flower beds and open spaces. Towards the house there is the walled garden and glasshouses that have a large variety of interesting species.

Can you spot the spider?
Lovely colours
A play on light and colour

Why do I love Winterbourne so much? I think it is the range of plants that come from around the world. Part of my role at the University is Director of Global Engagement. The Winterbourne Gardens web site mentions that the plant collection is taken from countries such as China, North and South America and the Alpine areas of the world. Maybe this is why walking around the Botanical Gardens feels as if you are undertaking international travel in a short space of time and distance.

Temporary entrance with social distancing sign into the walled garden
The lime walk
Walkway through the garden
Symmetry in the onion vegetable patch

Finally, whilst I love taking pictures of the plants, I do not know many of their names. So if anyone is able to help so that I can name them correctly it would be very much appreciated 🙂

Winterbourne house

In the present lockdown situation, there has been the opportunity to take up different photographic projects that due to a busy lifestyle you would not normally have the time to complete.  My photography revolves around my job which is travelling to conferences, my daily commute into Birmingham and the growing family.  I have tried my hand at other forms of photography but not really had the time to look at it in detail.  I belong to a photographic group which is part of the BritshTechNetwork and the convenor Ewen Rankin, a professional photographer has been setting us photographic tasks (https://www.britishtechnetwork.com/category/photo).  These have been included water droplets and colourful reflections on the top of bubbles. 

The one that I found fascinating was oil on water.  I have revisited the technique a couple of times and I was very pleased that one of my pictures was selected in the Top 4 of a recent #ShareMondays2020 competition on Twitter.  I therefore decided to write up how I obtained the colourful picture and show you how straightforward the technique can be.  If done well it does produce very striking colourful abstract photographs.

Equipment

The set-up is fairly simple.  You need a sturdy tripod with a horizontal arm that can help position the camera over the water.  A good deep bowl is needed, here a glass Pyrex water jug is used.  I have a small raised table that I use for my laptop work.  The jug is placed on a colourful background on the table.  In this case I have used a well-known children’s book and there is a patchwork of different colours that will provide an interesting background.  A strong light source is needed and I have placed this to lean into the jug.  Please be careful as there is a mix of electrical wires and water so do take the necessary precautions.  The continuous light was provided by a Rotolight NEO2 set at an angle.  My work table has some grooves which allowed the light to be stabilised at the base.

What is needed – Tripod, washing up liquid, Camera with macro lens, NEO2, Olive Oil, Colour background, teaspoon and water jug and small table to place jug on.
Positioning the light against the jug of water placed on the background

Technique

A small amount of Olive oil is placed in a teaspoon and dropped onto the surface of the water.  It is often difficult to make out the oil on the water so it is with careful trial and error that the macro lens is positioned to focus on the water surface and the oil.  The teaspoon is also used to gently stir the water although later we agitate the surface more vigorously.  

Camera settings

The camera used was a Canon D5 with a 100mm macro lens.  The focus was set at f/2 which throws the background out of focus.  I used a fast shutter speed (s/250) as the oil droplets will circulate quickly as it gets stirred up more and more.  Using live view assists with the focussing.  I upped the ISO to 800 so that I got a clear image on the back of the camera. I adjusted the set up so that I could bring a chair up close in order to sit comfortably and just concentrate on the photography.  Manual focus was used throughout to ensure sharp pictures. 

Advanced technique

After the oil is photographed then the next steps include adding washing up liquid to the water.  This changes the surface tension of the water and introduces more shapes.  It also creates more bubbles which can once again be guided by the teaspoon.  Changing the firing mode to continuous shooting allows you to capture different combinations as the water moves around following stirring/agitation.  Also remember to move, position or change the background to get different colour effects.

Processing 

The pictures are uploaded into Lightroom for processing and you are free to follow your normal preferred settings.  There may be a need for creative cropping to get the best abstract picture.  I like looking at the shapes and the symmetry or just letting my artistic decisions rule my cropping.  Two tips for oil and water pictures.  Increase your saturation levels to a much higher setting than normal.  The water absorbs the light and your pictures will initially look dull.  Increasing the saturation compensates for this and gives pleasing results.  I also move the picture into Photoshop where I apply an unsharp mask and adjust the levels to give the best exposure.  

The saturation is increased to around 40 in Lightroom

Summary

This technique is straightforward and produces some stunning abstract photography that you will be proud to display on your monitor or on your wall.  It is easy to set up and is a useful introduction into macro photography.  Have fun and enjoy taking the photographs.

During the weeks of lockdown, the garden flowers and blossom start to look very attractive objects to photograph. luckily I have my macro 100mm and ring flash to take pictures. I have also experimented with different views of the flowers from the more traditional look to close up macro. I have also looked at different lighting approaches. Here are a few of my pictures taken in my garden during April 2020 lockdown.

Dragon head flowers
This was a stacked picture of 6 photographs
Star Tulip
Magnolia Blossom
The colour purple
Dandelion close up
….but the flowers have a limited life

Keeping motivated under a lockdown does mean that you are ready to try out new ideas. I have always been fascinated by oil and water pictures so with time on my hands I decided to give it a go. What you need is a macro lens and off camera flash. Then to get a big bowl of water on top of some colourful paper or fabric. Set up the camera using a tripod so that is is over the surface of the water. Start dropping in some Olive Oil and/or washing liquid. Then start taking pictures. Here is a nice link from PhotoCrowd
https://www.photocrowd.com/…/158-11-tips-creating…/

There is still some work to do after taking the pictures and opening up Lightroom initially the pictures will look a bit dull. Look at that histogram and ensure you have a good distribution and that you use the highlight and shadows sliders wisely. The exposure should be adjusted and then you may need to push the saturation up to around 40 points on the scale. Then after some cropping of the picture a few of the final results are shown here. This is definitely a project that I will be going back to at a later date.