Spring Glorious Spring!!!!!

Ahhhh..... Now I feel better. Despite my earlier post on the obligatory nature of photographing flowers I really do enjoy them as subjects. They will sit there with a dumb look on their face until you are done. Don't have to ask them to smile or get their attention by jumping up and down. They were blowing around a little bit which made a bit of a challenge but I persevered and got a few I liked. I was on a photo expedition with one of my daughters, she was using my DA 35mm f2.4 and I wanted to match the focal length. Just had a thought... would she be "Some Gal With a Camera"? Hmmmmm.... will have to ask her

On a technical note, these were taken wide open at f3.5 using my K5 and a Pentax SMC 35mm f3.5, what I call my "Poor Man's Limited". Pentax makes a fabulous line of small (tiny really) lenses that they label as "Limited" they are pricey but worth it. Seeing as I cannot afford them, this old manual focus lens that is quite small works just fine in their place as far as I am concerned. I think the bokeh is even pretty nice for a lens that is only f3.5 at it's widest end.

This is the spire of the Jordan River Temple, these flowers were on the grounds of the temple and I could not go there without taking at least a couple shots of the temple too. This was taken at f11 or 16 trying to get ultimate depth of field.

These last few shots were taken because I liked what the background looked like as much as the in focus stuff. By the way, the out of focus areas of a photo are the areas where a photographer is concerned with bokeh. Bokeh refers to the quality or pleasing character of said blur. It can be used effectively with "Fast" lenses, such as lenses that have a maximum aperture of f1.4 or even f1.2. Slower lenses can also have that ability to isolate a subject and blur the back and foreground but you typically have to resort to getting REALLY close to the subject.

In this shot I deliberately put the only in focus things on the very bottom and stopped down to f5.6... I think... allowing the color of the flowers to drift off into a pastel sea that has form but not sharpness. I really REALLY liked how it ended up looking, especially when you can see it on a full screen.

The backlit petals drew me in to these, I don't know that the composition is the best but it makes a pleasing wallpaper on my computer monitor.