Shooting dew is lots of fun and I had seen quite a few shots through my time on Flickr of a single drop on a single strand of silk or blade of grass. Sometimes you get a nicely organized grouping of grass blades and they are all dewed, but all that seemed to be a little to staged to me. Nature’s pattern is in the noise and while some of the most beautiful shots out there are those that filter out that noise, there are those that embrace it to show something worthwhile as well.
So this week, after two weekends of rain and two weekends of not being able to mow my lawn, it was quite the forest. But with the dew, it was a silvery sheet. So I thought I’d try to find the “trees” in this “forest”. I also wanted to play with bokeh and DOF, so I stuck everything in manual and started shooting – starting at f8, I figured (and it turned out I was right) I’d have enough DOF to grab whole blades around mid frame. Thanks to the long lens, the background blur would take care of itself. I also didn’t want flares, so I massively underexposed the shot and then bumped up the exposure in post.
I like how it turned out, so that is, in the end what is important. And in terms of the “search”, things are still the same with one opportunity presenting itself, but for me, the more important part was the PhD. I think I’ll have to build from grass roots. I had another good meeting regarding my PhD plans, so that is certainly a green field process. I’m planning to to a transdisciplinary degree, so I am really starting from scratch.
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