Sequoia Park Garden
28 08 11 23:09 Filed in: Travelogue | Tips and Tricks
Eureka’s largest park is Sequoia Park, which contains a zoo, some redwoods, a bit of grass, a duck point, and a half acre flower garden. As parks go, it actually provides a fair amount of grist for the photographers mill. But perhaps the highlight this summer has been the flower garden, which is tended by a few volunteers. They have done a terrific job. The garden is literally exploding with color, and is a veritable feast for lenses and camera sensors.
Photographically, what is most rewarding to shoot are not clusters of flowers or the garden as a whole, but single plants, with other plants/foliage serving as a background. The trick is use a longer macro lens (around 100mm) or a very fast lens (such as a 50 f1.4). Such a lens allows one to shoot with a very narrow depth of field, which enables isolation of individual plants by blurring away the rest of the garden into a wash of color:
In such photography, what is out of focus can be nearly as important as the what is in focus. Look to find colors in the background that compliment the subject:
Getting as close as one can to the subject also narrows the depth of field and allows the background to be completely blurred away. A macro lens is helpful in such work:
There is no need to worry about getting the entire flower in focus. It’s actually not possible with the depth of field so narrow; nor is it necessarily desirable, as most macro and ultra-fast lens render out-of-focus areas very beautifully, leading to more artistic results, right out of the camera:
Perhaps the best time of all to photograph a flower garden is after a rain or a mist or a heavy dew, when the plants are covered with large drops of water, some of them magically suspended from the plant itself.
Photographically, what is most rewarding to shoot are not clusters of flowers or the garden as a whole, but single plants, with other plants/foliage serving as a background. The trick is use a longer macro lens (around 100mm) or a very fast lens (such as a 50 f1.4). Such a lens allows one to shoot with a very narrow depth of field, which enables isolation of individual plants by blurring away the rest of the garden into a wash of color:
In such photography, what is out of focus can be nearly as important as the what is in focus. Look to find colors in the background that compliment the subject:
Getting as close as one can to the subject also narrows the depth of field and allows the background to be completely blurred away. A macro lens is helpful in such work:
There is no need to worry about getting the entire flower in focus. It’s actually not possible with the depth of field so narrow; nor is it necessarily desirable, as most macro and ultra-fast lens render out-of-focus areas very beautifully, leading to more artistic results, right out of the camera:
Perhaps the best time of all to photograph a flower garden is after a rain or a mist or a heavy dew, when the plants are covered with large drops of water, some of them magically suspended from the plant itself.
Tweet