[Leica] Josha Tree National Park Wildflowers

[abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge)]

Thanks, Ted, I really appreciate you comments. What's instructive is
how difficult it is to put away a preconceived idea: I want this nice
sharp shot because I want people to SEE this. But of course I couldn't
get that, exactly, so I wasn't willing to set aside what I WANTED and
see what I was GIVEN.

Yet another lesson you, and others on this list, have shared.

Thank you - thank all of you!

Adam

ps: We didn't have time to get to Death Valley. I wish I had - there's
a LAKE again in the bottom of the valley - a kayaker paddling across
the ankle-deep lake. All across the desert southwest there are
flowers, different species at different altitudes, different soils,
different micro-climates. It's wonderful and amazing - blends of color
and texture - sometimes whole mountainsides normally grays and browns
now yellow and green. Looking across a desert vista - out on the
horizon - a huge patch of yellow - wildflowers as if someone had
painted the landscape with a brush. It's a Springtime, not of a
centure, but of several centuries. Is this what the Anasazi lived in
before the climate shifted? I don't know - but it's wonderful to
experience now.

AB


On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 21:30:43 -0800, Ted Grant <tedgrant@shaw.ca> wrote:
> Adam Bridge showed & said:
> Subject: [Leica] Josha Tree National Park Wildflowers
> > On Tuesday we drove back to California from Arizona, taking a route
> > through Joshua Tree National Park.
> > > The rains this year have created a vast array of wildflowers.
> > > <http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/03/15/index.html>
> 
> > It was very tricky shooting - quite breezy - even the little ones
> > close to the ground were moving. The big ones were just impossible.
> > All of these are hand-held. There was no point in a tripod I'm afraid.
> > There are a few that are a tad soft but they give the idea of what it
> > was like there.<<<<<
> 
> Hi Adam,
>  May I suggest the next time you run into.....
> > It was very tricky shooting - quite breezy - even the little ones
> > close to the ground were moving. The big ones were just impossible.
> > All of these are hand-held. There was no point in a tripod I'm afraid.
> > There are a few that are a tad soft but they give the idea of what it
> > was like there.<<<<<
> 
> Do not apologize for some un-sharpness under this kind of weather condition
> for the very simple reason.....  ready?
> 
> Given the breeze and flower movement heck I'd have taken every opportunity 
> I
> could to "shoot blurred action!" :-) It's like, if you can't stop them, 
> then
> let them blur into beautiful coloured flowers in motion. After all that's
> what they were doing wasn't it? In motion?
> 
> I would have shot at various shutter speeds, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15 and up tight to
> fill the frame.  I might have gone real wild and shot some at 1/2 a second
> simply because the potential of beauty in motion is quite amazing 
> sometimes.
> And I'd have shot a ton of them simply because you never know how good
> they'll look until you see them on the light table. :-)
> 
> It's sort of thinking and wondering  "how can I make this work for me?" I
> realize most people want to shoot tight stopped action beautiful flowers,
> fair enough.  However, under the circumstance of wind and flower movement
> then make use of that rather than fighting it and becoming frustrated to
> death.
> 
> But it does appear you did get some that looked pretty good.
> 
> Actually I saw a TV news clip last evening about the flowers this year in
> Death Valley due to the rain and the area looked like a photographer's 
> dream
> for flower beauty.
> 
> ted
> 
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