Reach For The Sky

It's hard to believe that a month has already gone by since I made the claim back on June 21st that the blog was going to be going green as I began to post a whole lot of pictures taken in my Mom's backyard flowerbed.  I guess you could say that I got a little bit sidetracked in between the July 1st concerts (Guitarz feat. Matt Laurent and Girls Wanna Have Fun Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) and some fireworks displays (China and Spain).  This has resulted in a large backlog of photographs that I have yet to share with all of you.  In an effort to get back on track, here is one of my Mom's Day Lilies.  I've taken photographs of them before, but I've sent you on enough link trips today.  Though, feel free to search around here and find them yourself.  Back to this flower, it was positioned at kind of an angle that led me to think it would look good being shot vertically instead of horizontally, which is how I have traditionally shot this kind of flower.  I am pretty happy with the result.  I like how the stems appear to be reaching out to the sky and the use of the Macro lens really brings out the pollen.  This photo is also an example of being a failed lesson and a lesson learned.  Failed in the sense that I once again found myself shooting at ISO 1600 because I once again forgot to reset the camera after my last set of photos.  That's why some of the green in the background may appear to be a bit grainy.  A lesson learned in the sense that I shot at f/11 in order to make sure that more of the flower would be in focus, knowing that the Macro lens would take care of blurring out the background for me.  Luckily, the background noise isn't all that visible, some of you out there may not have even noticed if I hadn't pointed it out...I hope.  This photo was shot at f/11, 1/80sec, ISO 1600 at 60mm and it's rapidly shooting up the chart of favourite photos taken in my Mom's garden.