{"id":195,"date":"2011-08-08T01:50:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T01:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/?p=195"},"modified":"2011-08-08T01:52:57","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T01:52:57","slug":"august-week-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"August – week 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We have fog every day in my part of San Francisco.\u00c2\u00a0 This can be nice light for various subjects, especially wildflowers and people portraits.\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously you know my first choice will always be the wildflowers.\u00c2\u00a0 They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talk back!\u00c2\u00a0 But they do blow in the wind.<\/p>\n

The Coastal Paintbrush is pretty prolific on the beach sand dunes in San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties right now.\u00c2\u00a0 They are often \u00c2\u00a0tricky flowers to photograph because their petals are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153furry\/fuzzy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that gives the appearance in your image that the flower might be on the soft side (slightly out of focus). There are some accessible ones from the parking lot at Land\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s End above the Cliff House restaurant here in SF.<\/p>\n

I chose a shallow depth of field that adds to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153soft feel.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 This way the surrounding paintbrushes go out of focus quickly rendering them merely splashes of color.\u00c2\u00a0 Depth-of-field is the amount of focus you have in your image.\u00c2\u00a0 You achieve this by choosing your aperture.\u00c2\u00a0 The smaller the aperture (opening) in your lens the greater the depth of field you can achieve.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So if you are looking for a lot of depth-of-field (DOF) you might choose f\/16, f\/22 or even f\/40 (if you have it).\u00c2\u00a0 When using a macro or close up lens, in essence, you have a much shallower DOF.\u00c2\u00a0 The distance from one petal to another may only be a fraction of an inch but you will need a small (seems like a larger number, but that is because it is a fraction) aperture to achieve the depth-of-field needed to keep the petals in focus.<\/p>\n

Then watch your background, because as you start to pull that into focus it could be competing with your subject.\u00c2\u00a0 So with these paintbrushes I choose to get only a small portion of the flower in focus.\u00c2\u00a0 If you are using a macros lens try focusing on a particular part of a petal and shoot at f\/2.8 or f\/4 and notice (depth-of-field preview button) how every thing else will go out of focus that it is almost just fluffy shapes of color.\u00c2\u00a0 Avoid white splashes.\u00c2\u00a0 They are simply too bright and that is all your eye will look at!<\/p>\n

My lens of choice was a 100-400 mm at 400 mm with an extension tube.\u00c2\u00a0 This helps narrow the background and add to the shallow depth-of-field. My lens has a collar on it that attaches to my tripod head so I can move from horizontal to vertical very easily.\u00c2\u00a0 Photograph these flowers from a low position \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if they were squirrels on the ground you would get down at eye level.\u00c2\u00a0 So petal level as you will!<\/p>\n

I found a wonderful Indian Paintbrush poem by Ruth Obee<\/a> \u00c2\u00a0(so go to her website and check it out).<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Long ago in the West, the Great Spirit<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 took the weft of the evening sunset\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 and mixed it with the hematite red<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 of a rusted old butte, flint-lapped<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 by erosion and time, to color an Indian paintbrush<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 like a sun-fired plume,<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 blooming from May to September,<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 an eternal flame, a memorial,<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 to the blue-sky loving Ute, who were death-marched<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 like Old Testament tribes from their shining<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Rocky Mountain home – exiled<\/em>
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 to the deserts of Utah.<\/em><\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have fog every day in my part of San Francisco.\u00c2\u00a0 This can be nice light for various subjects, especially wildflowers and people portraits.\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously you know my first choice will always be the wildflowers.\u00c2\u00a0 They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talk back!\u00c2\u00a0 But … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hkEw-39","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}