1. July 2011 by Friedhelm.

Again I used my 100-400mm lens to create this image. I used just natural light and picked a dark background.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

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30. June 2011 by Friedhelm.

I photographed this Succulent plat at Gamble Garden also. I used different f stops to get just enough depth of field to recognize the plant. A totally wide open lens blurred pretty much the entire background. I finally settled at f8.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

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29. June 2011 by Friedhelm.

I photographed these mountain flowers in the high Sierra mountains yesterday. I used an aperture of f8 on a 70-200 lens to get a small group of flowers into focus and use the out of focus plants as a background.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

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28. June 2011 by Friedhelm.

Long lenses compress background and foreground and giving you a much more shallow depth of field than wide angle lenses. I photographed this group of flowers using a 100-400 mm lens at 400mm. I used a diffuser to soften the light and some bushes and trees served as a wonderful background.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

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27. June 2011 by Friedhelm.

Last week I visited Gamble Garden in Palo Alto, CA. This is a beautiful garden to photograph flowers. for this week I challenge you to continue to work on flower photography and create some great images!

I photographed theses Sweat Peas in bright sunlight. I used a round diffuser to soften the light and block out the sun on the flowers.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

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25. February 2011 by Friedhelm.

I love the yellow -green contrast in this image. Without the “green” the image would have been pretty boring. The art of photography is to see and “ordinary” subject like this tulip and create a great image. This is the challenge and this is the reason why I practice over and over again to improve the way I see and photograph. And yes, photography is hard work if you want to go beyond the usual.

Happy photographing!

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24. February 2011 by Friedhelm.

I photographed this orchid in a studio setting using a white background. I felt that the white background did not work well. the image looked kind of dull. I looked through my files and found these clouds that made a much better background for my subject.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

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23. February 2011 by Friedhelm.

I photographed these Spring flowers outside right before sunset yesterday. I put the camera on a tripod, used the timer and handheld a black reflector right behind the flowers. In addition I put a frame around the image using blue as an additional colors. You decide which one you like best!

Happy photographing!

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22. February 2011 by Friedhelm.

It was raining in buckets last Friday in Walnut Creek, CA. My wife was shopping and was looking for a dry place to photograph “something.” At the parking place under an overhanging I discovered some flowers and started photographing. At the end I was happy with this image.

Enjoy and go out photographing!

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21. February 2011 by Friedhelm.

Sometimes it feels that a week is not enough to photograph on a certain subject. If one wants to get good at almost anything in life one has constantly improve and practice, practice, practice. Therefor I would like to shoot flowers for a second week. If nothing is blooming in your neighborhood go out and purchase a few flowers and again practice, practice practice.

I photographed this group of flowers in Carmel, CA yesterday. I loved the red brick side-walk and used it as a background. In order to blur the background I opened the lens up to f2.8. I also underexposed the image purposely. In post production I refined my digital image using a relatively high contrast in the high key colors (white) and a softer color rendition in the low key colors. Take a close look at the white tones how the higher contrast brings out the detail in the flower.

Enjoy and keep on photographing! 

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