[Leica] Iris on a lovely day

[Alastair Firkin <firkin@netconnect.com.au>]

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Alastair writes:

>I told you guys I'd go out with the Leica and take tulips. Well I did, but
>the best shot was this iris, which you can see at the Rollei TLR club at
>this address:
Gerry responds:
Am I getting confused here - you go out with the Leica to photograph tulips,
end up with an Iris and then post it on the Rollei board or is it you?
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Gerry,

Yes, of course you are confused, but everything you say is correct. I did
go out to take tulips, but some how this image of the iris [which I took to
symbolize the cross] ended up being the best of the bunch. Yes I did use a
leica --- I after all, wanted to introduce some images to this group after
the recent discussions, and yes it is on the Rollei board, on a section
dedicated to a cross section of images using any and all cameras, run by my
friend Satoshi Oka. My image of the River Red Gum was taken with Hasselblad
and neutral density filters [that I picked up cheap ;-) ]

I've been taking flowers now for a couple of years with the aim of
improving my compositional eye. Apart from the images being very lovely
[Helen uses them on cards so that they do not all go to waste], they have
allowed me to play around with placing images in the frame and the effect
that they have on me. I think my next home page update will be a range of
these images and the effects I was trying to achieve. The iris seemed like
a cross, with its leaf on the left [with the little browned tip] reminding
me of an upheld arm. I was hoping to emphasise the vertical and oblique
elements [in focus] with the horizontal elements of the birch leaves and
the brick wall behind, without allowing them to dominate. Therefore the
shallow DOF [and ni-bokeh ;-) ] The splash of colour is a bonus, though it
works in b/w as well, but I did not want to have the colour shouting at
you, so I had to wait for the clouds to hide the sun and dull the image a
bit, to give the soft effect I wanted to create a "religious" feel.

http://cgi.linkclub.or.jp/~dmakos/imgsquare/index.cgi?

OK so you may not agree with any of this, and yes I may well be a large
wanker, but this is what I was setting out to do with this image, and I
would love to hear if any of you think ANY of it worked ;-)

cheers

Alastair Firkin

http://users.netconnect.com.au/~firkin/AGFhmpg.html