Pretty Little Spikes

Over the last few years, my Mom's Garden provided me with all kinds of models, more than willing to sit around and let me photograph them for as long as I wanted, and to take as many photographs as I wanted.  You've all heard the stories before, and you already know that I have a large reserve of flower shots from the garden, so let's just get right to the point as these are a few more of my Mom's flowers.  This little beauty is an Echinacea, or more commonly known as a Cone Flower.  I didn't really do much different for these shots than I have for the many other flower photographs  I've taken.  I like to shoot them with a large aperture so that the flower itself is very sharp and the background is very blurry.  Usually you like to have the petals featured when you take shots of flowers, but with the Echinacea, the center of the flowers with all of the little spikes.  There are tiny pieces of pollen wedged between the spikes, and I really wanted to get a good shot of those tiny little things  I think it adds a little something to the shot.  In real life, I try to stay as far away from pollen as it would usually leave me with watery eyes and hours upon hours of fun as I sneeze my head off, but the photographer in me wants to get as close as possible in order to get a nicer photograph. Getting back to the cones, what originally drew me to these flowers was the cones.  When I'd stand over the flower and look directly into the center, it would almost have a dizzying effect as odd patterns would seem to appear and play tricks with my eyes.  I tried to repeat the sensation with the second photograph you see here on the page.  If you look very closely at the center of the flower, you can kind of see the same effects that I experienced .  You can see a similar type of effect with the third photo in this set.  Instead of looking straight down on the flower, I tried to look at it from a different angle where you'd get a look across the center, or as I like to call it, the face, of the flower.  You get a nice look at the top of the cones and also the different colours that you can find in the cones.  I also enjoy the little surprises you get from time to time when you're photographing flowers.  You get visited by little insects once in a while.  If the first and fourth photographs look somewhat the same, it's because they pretty much are.  The little difference is down in the bottom left-hand corner of the photograph.  I had moved around a little bit to take a second shot of the flower from a different vantage point.  I didn't notice the little guy down there while I was taking the photograph as I was pretty much focused on the cones of the flower.  If I had seen him, I would have tried to switch the focus from the cones down to the little bug who passed by to photobomb my shot.  The first photograph was taken at f/4, 1/60sec, ISO 1600 at 68mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/4, 1/100sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/4, 1/160sec, ISO 1600 at 68mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/4, 1/60sec, ISO 1600 at 68mm.  Before anyone out there raises their arms to say "Hey Eric, you forgot to reset your ISO again didn't you!", nope, not this time.  I took these photos a little bit after a rain storm and it was real grey outside.  So no, this time using ISO 1600 wasn't actually a mistake.  it was done on purpose.  It was probably the photographs I took the day after these that ended up being shot at ISO 1600 for no good reason whatsoever.  Live and learn.