Variety with low sun

For this exercise, I took a sequence of photographs of anemone flowers in the late afternoon sunshine on the last day of September.

These photographs were taken with a new lens, an AF-S DX Nikon 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 ER VR II. I damaged the old 70-210 mm telephoto lens whilst we were on holiday in Scotland in August. After some research and discussion with photography friends, I decided that this wide to long telephoto lens would suit the holiday type of photography which is currently my main interest.

Image 1: Frontal lighting

Nikon 18-200mm at 200mm: Iso 200 f16 for 1/60th second

I chose a flower head pointing towards the setting sun, which was free of any shadows. With the sunlight coming from behind the camera, the background was also quite brightly lit. I therefore used the zoom at maximum extension to blur the detail and to narrow down the field of view of the background. I took the photograph from above the flower heads as a lower viewpoint would have included a background wall which would have been quite distracting. It was however quite difficult to position myself where my shadow did not obscure the flowers. In this photo, my shadow does fall across the flower stems in the lower left of the frame. However, I do not feel that this detracts from the main subject.

Image 2: Side lighting

Nikon 18-200mm at 112mm: Iso 200 f5.3 for 1/320th second

I chose this flower head as it was just in a position where shadows from other petals covered a significant area of the flower head. The photograph was taken looking down from roughly square on to the surface of the flower. From a standing position, this meant using a mid-range focal length to frame the subject. I opened up the aperture to blur the background, parts of which were also catching the sunlight.

I cropped frame to remove a band from the bottom of the frame. I chose this composition, as I felt that the flower and bud just to the right of centre are balanced by the anemone leaves in the upper left area of the frame. Visually, these form a diagonal line across the frame from top left down to bottom right. I think that this composition is rather reminiscent of a botanical illustration, where the artist aims to show various parts of the plant; flowers, buds and leaves within the frame.

Image 3: Back lighting

Nikon 18-200mm at 200mm: Iso 200 f16 for 1/45th seconds

I again used maximum focal length in order to limit the field of view of the background. Otherwise there would have been distracting light spots in the background foliage. I checked the histogram after taking the photos and decided that the exposure was OK without bracketing.

I originally used a portrait frame with the flower head in the upper part of the frame. However, I decided that it was the lights and shadows of the overlapping petals which were the visual interest from this viewpoint. I therefore cropped the photograph close to the flower head, except on the left hand side where a strand of cobweb is just catching the light creating some diagonal asymmetry.

Image 4: Edge lighting

Nikon 18-200mm at 112mm: Iso 200 f16 for 1/50th second

My original intention was to photograph this group of flowers to illustrate back lighting. However, I afterwards took the previous photograph with the flower head facing the lens. I have nevertheless included this photograph as I think that the edge lighting of the flower stems is a key visual element of the photograph. I used a mid-range focal length as the background is relatively uniform and dark.

Observations

Each of these photographs seems to convey a different attribute of these anemones:-

• The front light seems to emphasize pure white simplicity of the petals.
• The side light emphasizes the shape and form of the petals and the leaves.
• The back light focusses attention on the complexity of the petal structure and highlights their curled over edges.
• The edge lighting shows the tallness of the flower stems, which are not apparent in the other versions.

Conclusions

When I thought about using the anemones as the subject for this exercise, I was not sure whether they would turn out to be a suitable subject. I was pleasantly surprised when working through the photos and was reasonably pleased with the outcome.