I’ve been trying to take lots of photos to practice my photography, and on Friday nights I share some of them with Kalyn’s Kitchen readers; hopefully entertaining even if they aren’t always that technically good. This week I gave an update on my vegetable garden, but the photos tonight are some I took a few weeks ago of the flowers in my front yard. This spiky pink flower is Bee Balm, one of my favorite flowers, but actually an herb that supposedly has a flavor similar to oregano. I haven’t tasted it, but I love this flower and have several colors of it.
On the west side of my front yard there’s a flower border with Yarrow, Bee Balm, and Mountain Sage growing in a row.
If you stand on my front steps and look to the left, you’ll see this row of lillies and daisies. There’s also a few other types of flowers growing here in front of the porch, but they’re overshadowed by the lilies and daisies!
Here’s a closer view of the lilies, which I planted about four years ago when I decided to splurge on some new perennials. They’ve been lovely every year.
Finally, another view of the Yarrow, which is a flower I love even though I really hate the smell. When the blooms fade, I have to force myself to prune them so they’ll bloom again in the fall.
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Gorgeous flowers – I particularly like those lillies.
As for sharpening up the focus – I think all you really need to do to add more impact to the photos is focus on a particular point and use a shallow depth of field (a low f-stop number), rather than just autofocusing on the whole scene. If talk of f-stops gives you the heebies, using either a macro lens or a normal lens but zoomed in will give you a shallow depth of field. That way you can photograph, say, a white daisy in focus, with a blurred pink background of lillies behind it. Don’t necessarily need a tripod – just shoot on a sunny day! Flowers are also a great way to practise your manual focusing.
22 Comments on “Friday Night Photos: Flowers Blooming in My Front Yard”
Jeanne, I do know about f-stops, just happened to not choose low enough ones for these shots I guess.
Gorgeous flowers – I particularly like those lillies.
As for sharpening up the focus – I think all you really need to do to add more impact to the photos is focus on a particular point and use a shallow depth of field (a low f-stop number), rather than just autofocusing on the whole scene. If talk of f-stops gives you the heebies, using either a macro lens or a normal lens but zoomed in will give you a shallow depth of field. That way you can photograph, say, a white daisy in focus, with a blurred pink background of lillies behind it. Don’t necessarily need a tripod – just shoot on a sunny day! Flowers are also a great way to practise your manual focusing.