Looking for Nectar: The Story Behind the Photo

By Dick Dodds

Looking for Nectar by Dick Dodds (ISO 100, 1/800, f/4.0, 105mm)

My wife and I were in Vail, Colorado, in August 2020 escaping the Texas heat for a couple of weeks. We were walking along the main street of Vail village among a blaze of colorful flowers. All of a sudden, my wife spotted a beautiful hummingbird near one of the flowers.

I had my Canon 6D set on aperture priority for taking street scenes. I immediately switched it to shutter priority and set the speed to 1/800th. I wanted to freeze the body of the bird but still have some blur on the wings to show motion. I was already in burst mode and Auto ISO. I zoomed in to 105mm, and I was able to shoot 30 images in about four seconds. The bird then flew away after 30 seconds!

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The Best of Spring: The Story Behind the Photo

By Lynne Rogers Harris

The Best of Spring by Lynne Rogers Harris (ISO 200, f5.6, 1/2000)

Recently, I met a fellow photographer at River Legacy Park in Arlington, Texas, to try a new technique.

Another Trinity Arts Photography Club (TAPC) member had shared a video on how to shoot and process high-key images. This isn’t exactly high key, but the method used was about the same. I took a white board and placed it behind the flowers and shot a little over-exposed. This made it much easier to turn the background a nice white when editing in Photoshop.

I found that if I shot with the sun directly on the flowers, I had to do some maneuvering to get rid of the dark shadows. I actually shot several flowers that I thought turned out pretty good. I processed this with the white background, did a little cloning to take out
‘ junk,’ and voila — I had my image.

This photo is actually a composite of two shots. I thought these type of images with flowers made nice little cards, so I’ve printed several of them.

After the Sprinkler: The Story Behind the Photo

By Janet Cunningham

After the Sprinkler by Janet Cunningham

After the sprinkler went off one morning, I noticed beautiful water droplets on my neighbor’s Gerber daisies. I wanted an unusual perspective, so I got down even with one of the flowers so I could capture the droplets sitting on top of the petals. Surprise…there was a flower behind the one I was photographing, and it was being reflected in the droplets!

I used a Sigma 105mm macro lens on a Canon 70D. Macro lenses have a shallow depth of field, so I took nine images focusing on nine different droplets, then combined the images in Photoshop.

To shoot these images I used a tripod, a cable release, and manual focus on the lens.

There are many tutorials on how to combine the images using the focus-stacking procedure. I found a Phlearn video helpful: “How To Do Focus Stacking in Photoshop.”