Robin came home to me standing in front of the garden, camera in hand, in deep ponder. “You're not getting out enough, hon,” she said. Another garden shot was going to be the Daily Photo.
It's true, I have been feeling a little homebound. I had a huge file order for the University of Richmond viewbook to fulfill, which included a number of stitched pans (yeah, I finally convinced a client to use some.) I'd been sitting in front of my monitor all week, breaking late afternoon to hunt for a Daily Photo.
The daffodils are in bloom, a bright spot in an otherwise late winter barren environment (note to self—get more winter interest plantings in this year). So, tiny as it is, that's been my challenge for a couple of weeks: get a daffodil photo that I like.
This is not a project on the order of, say, photographing Hope on five continents (the top vote getter—1315—on the Dream Assignment contest. My dance project has 32 votes. I don't think I'm going to the finals.) This a is very lower-case project, just enough to keep myself in form, the way some people practice scales or do yoga every day. I carve out a space to make a photo every day, even when all I seem to do is make failed daffodil photos.
It's the depth of the flower cup that's been getting to me. I've been poking my lens into the thing, expecting that a shallow depth of field image of the stamen in focus would be interesting. It isn't. A side portrait of the flower looked like a snapshot of a daffodil, nothing more. It's been harder than I thought. Most days, I've picked some other shot instead for the “Best Of Day” position on the photo blog, even if most of my attention has been at the dafs.
After several days at this, it started coming together. The solution seemed to be to make the out of focus area dominant. The sharp part, the single daf, becomes the smallest thing in the frame. I'll see how much juice this shot's got, and I'll keep whacking away at it for the next few days. I'll either get real good at it, or I'll get bored with the shot and flail away until I find something else that works better.
Or I wait until the tulips start blooming. Tulips are way easier.
See the Daffodil Project arc on Flickr.
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