Garden photography

For the past 30 years, I've been taking pictures of flowers and gardens amassing a huge collection of slides in the process. I've taken several courses on photography and have enjoyed lugging all my equipment along on various garden jaunts.

But I'm loving my digital camera. I got it toward the end of last summer and started messing about with it. I take far too many pictures but what the heck. I did that when I was using film too - the thought being that film was the cheapest variable I worked with (my time was far more valuable than the film for example) I'm in the process of moving my collection to digital and taking as many digital pictures as possible to get the individual plant collection into the 21st century.

Now when I take my "equipment" - it is a single camera rather than a camera and tons of lenses to go along. Eventually, I'll have to take a laptop for extra storage but for now - I'm good with a monster internal memory chip.

The rules for taking good pictures still hold true though. When I see something I like, I always start with a faraway shot and then increasingly closer and closer until I can't get either my camera or myself any closer to the subject I'm taking. I get some great shots at unexpected distances this way.

My first digital camera - a Canon s1r1 - does not have a macro lens (a close up) but it does have a 32X zoom. I find if I stand back 10 feet and use the zoom, I can get a "reasonable" closeup. But the next camera will definitely have a closeup system to let me get even closer. If you're going to be doing a lot of flower pictures - a "macro" ability is a must.

And that's what I've learned about digital photography this month.