Posted April 4, 2012 by Gavin Hoey in Articles

Spring Flowers

It’s just over two weeks until my all day workshop at Borde Hill Gardens and I’ve got some great plans for the day. So yesterday I paid my first visit of the year to the gardens to check out what was growing and to bag a few shots.

	The first stop of the day was to the Italian garden which has a beautiful ornamental pond surrounded by terracotta pots which are currently stuffed full of tulips. This one caught my eye at it was just coming into bloom. One thing we’ll be looking at during the workshop is the pros and cons of shooting in the shade. Let’s just say it’s easier to add contrast to a photo then it is to take it away.
	Next up it was a spot of close up work with my Canon 60mm macro. In an ideal world I’d be using a tripod to keep the shots sharp and the ISO down. Sadly I didn’t have a tripod with me so this is a handheld shot at a fairly high ISO. Macro photography needs time and practice and it’s not uncommon to get lots of failed shots before bagging one good photo.
	Borde Hill is currently a riot of yellow as the daffodils are in full bloom. This is a close up isn’t all that it seems. Once again I’m shooting without the aid of a tripod, which required me to use a big the aperture in order to avoid a slow shutter speed and the dreaded camera shake. The downside was the depth of field wasn’t enough to get everything in focus in one shot… so I took two. Each photo was in focus on a different part of the flower and I used Photoshop to automatically stack the two focus points together.