Well, the Friday field trip pictures are finally up on my gallery page! These are from two weeks ago, and were from the close to home photo shoot. They are not much to look at, other than the lighting. I took three pictures of some flowers that were planted in a pot, and used flash with two of them, and no flash with the other.
They are a good illustration of what happens when you use flash that is too strong for the subject when you are photographing outside. The background will become very dark and sometimes entirely black. If this is the effect that you want, great, but most times it is not.
To use fill flash properly, set your flash to one stop under what your camera meter reads. That way, the flash will give you a pleasing effect, like in photo number one in the series. The background is dark, but not black, and the flowers are exposed properly. In this case it was just dumb luck, since I can’t adjust the flash power on this camera.
I also did not try a trick that I learned about using some corn syrup and water. If you add some corn syrup to water in a spray bottle, and then spray the plants that you are photographing, it gives you a very cool look, like it just rained. Then, you can zoom in on the water droplets, and create some nice shots of “fresh rain” on flowers.
I took some shots of the baby Hummingbirds, too, while I was at it with the flowers. Fortunately, I got the shot of the two babies in the nest. They were, at this point, old enough to fly, and several days after I took this shot, they flew the coop. I know that Hummingbirds migrate, and apparently it coincides with when the babies are old enough to fly.
Now, we know what the empty nest syndrome must feel like. Anyway, this week’s Friday field trip subject will be hot-air balloons. They fly here most mornings, so wake up early and we’ll see you there!