1/500 sec at f/8, focal length: 200mm, ISO 400 - September 3, 2008, 4:54pm PDT
Photographed with Canon EOS 20D, EF 70-200mm f/4L, hand held
I was walking out my front door to let the kids play in the yard when I saw that this plant was back lit beautifully by the soon to be setting sun. I immediately turned around to grab my camera and set off to work.
More after the jump...
This proved to be a challenging situation. First I needed to find a composition with good rhythm and balance of the leaves and branches. Next was getting an aperture that provided enough depth but not so much that the background would become distracting. In this case, f/8 was my golden ticket. I would have liked a bit more depth, but the amount that I got is definitely usable. Plus, f/8 gave the background a nice pattern without becoming too distracting. If I opened or closed my aperture 1 stop either way, the composition did not work. Not enough depth or too distracting. The last thing to take care of was the flare. Even with the lens hood on, the sun was at a low enough angle to cause flare. My left hand proved to be the best tool to combat this. The only problem with that being that I was too lazy to get out the tripod. I bumped up the ISO to 400 so that I could hand hold the camera with one hand at a fast enough shutter speed to not get camera blur (bad, bad, bad technique...but it worked).
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