I’ve been busy this week. This is the second song we recorded on Friday. It was written by my partner-in-crime Dom De Dato, who played and sang everything you hear. I was the engineer. I also made the clip, based around three photos of marigolds.
The words come from Bilhana Kavi, a Kashmiri poet writing in the tenth century.
After a very wet winter, the garden is bouncing back. The little lobelia has self seeded itself onto the tree stump, the transplanted rose is coming alive and the carnations just keep going.
Despite the rains, the garden thrives. The cactus took it badly, but the wood fungus is really ornamental.
One of the best camera accessories I ever bought for my Canon EOS camera was a macro ring extender. For a very reasonable price my 28/50 lens was converted to macro.
This is brilliant for flowers… however, it’s hard to stay focused on such tiny objects if there’s a breeze!
Some alien plants… known in Australia as Kangaroo Paws.
These flowers have no scent, but they resonate long and deep within my heart.
Street art in Figeac…. I used to prowl the backstreets looking for more of this guy’s work. I’m sure I missed a couple… but I did catch up with his stuff in Cahors and elsewhere.
I couldn’t resist another go at this week’s challenge.
I use a Canon macro ring extender plus I also use my 80 – 200 telephoto lense which can get some nice close ups.
Flowers and herbs around my house in Figeac, France.
Gravity is relentless. This week’s heavy rains have weighed down the native gardenias….. they look like ballet dancers who’ve been through a flood.
The back garden, Dangar Island, Australia
I’ve been trying to take some photos of bromeliads, but it’s been very difficult. They live in a shady spot and hide among their sharp serrated leaves. I can’t capture the colour, the deepness of the red. They seem to reflect a bright light, even without a flash they glow.
I ended up using a telephoto lense, no flash, small aperture and a very long exposure time (5 – 13 seconds). Even so, they defy capture.
Tell us your tried and true techniques for focusing when that deadline looms and you need to get work done. In other words, how do you avoid wasted days and wasted nights?
I’m going to go a bit off-piste here and just concentrate on focus. I’ve been out and about yesterday and today with my macro ring lense extender. I’m trying to capture the signs of spring. It’s so lovely here, you can almost see the buds unfurling before your very eyes. What I’m looking for is quite small. As it happens, I cant focus on very much at all. My own eyes are not that good, the SLR’s autofocus is literally out of its depth.
The closer you look, the more you see. Even the petals of a tiny flower will curve away out of focus as milimetres become miles. Backgrounds are fine, you can get a good bokeh, as they call it. However, even the smallest bloom contains an infinity. I get back home only to be disappointed with the whole crop of pictures. Wasted days? No, not really. I’ve seen real beauty close up.
There’s a moral here. When you need to focus, just focus on one thing at a time. If there’s too much and you dont know where to start, take advice from Goethe. ‘Do that which is closest at hand’. If there’s a deadline looming, I find that panic is quite effective. eg. putting together a Daily Prompt really quickly to get a good spot on the list 😉
Some fuzzy macros from outside…. oh yeah, they dont stay still either!
The Ambitious Drifter 
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