Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Be Our Guest

by Dotti

Our guest today is Roxi Hardegree, a longtime follower at FOL and a person with a passion for photography. Roxi practices all kinds of photography, still life, nature, random things that catch her eye but her favorite challenge is capturing life as it happens.

Roxi has had a camera in her hands since 7th grade but lately has found a passion for phoneography and photo editing apps which she uses to turn her phone photos into art. You can find Roxi at her blog,  Instagram, Flickr or Society 6

Shooting Through

I would like to introduce a way of shooting photographs that is not very common. It’s referred to as “shooting through”and is especially effective for flowers.

First, identify your main subject. Position yourself so some flowers will be partially in front of your subject but not totally obscuring it. If you prefer to use auto focus you may need to reposition yourself carefully otherwise manual focus is the best choice. 

The closer you get, the more blur you’ll get. The more distance between your foreground and subject, the more blur you will have. This can also be controlled by your camera settings. You don't necessarily need to have a small aperture like you might think. Most of the time I have my camera set to aperture priority mode so it's easy to adjust. Personally, for flowers I like there to be a recognizable amount of the flower in the blurry foreground.
  
These were shot with my 100mm Macro.

 ISO100, 100mm, f/2.8, 1/250

An example of one that didn't turn out so good. Not enough blur left me with too much 'distraction' in the image.

ISO100, 100mm, f/4, 1/125

Sometimes it’s just nice to have those creative blurs of colors.

ISO100, 100mm, f/4.0, 1/500

ISO100, 100mm, f/8.0, 1/60

These shots were done using a 70-300 lens.

ISO 800, 300mm, f/11, 1/1000

ISO100, 190mm, f/5.6, 1/250

It would have been better if Miss Lily had faced me…

ISO200, 180mm, f/5.6 1/350

And one more daisy shot.

ISO100, 100mm, f/4.5, 1/250

If you don't have flower beds to shoot, this would work just as well indoors with flowers in several vases, a backdrop, and a little creativity. You just might be surprised at what shows up on your camera.

This technique is so fun to experiment with and can yield some interesting results. Perhaps I should put myself out in the flowers. I could use a little blur over my wrinkles.
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14 comments:

Carol said...

If there are any wrinkles there, they measure your time outdoors being creative! This is something I have never even heard of and I can't wait to try! The images are lovely, but its also so fun to learn a new way to play! Thank you, and come visit often💜

Carol said...

That was a heart at the end. I don't know why it became question marks!

leigh said...

Beautiful photos Roxi! Thank you for joining us today. I can't wait to try shooting through.

heyjudephotography said...

Such a coincidence - I just read an article about this just this weekend. It looks like it will be fun to try, you certainly have some beautiful results! Thanks for being our guest today.

Dotti said...

It's always fun to learn a new way of looking at things and when it involves flower photography, it's even better! Beautiful photos, Roxi! Thank you so much for being our guest today.

Deanna said...

Oh what a fun post and like Dotti, I am always up for new ways to capture flowers in my garden. Thanks for this and for being our guest today!!

kelly said...

roxi what a great tip! I love how shooting through changes the perspective and puts the subject in context with the rest of the surrounding! can't wait to give this a try!

Geri said...

So happy to see Roxi featured here! Beautiful shots!

terriporter said...

This looks like a lot of fun, especially since it is involving flowers, my favorite subject! Can't wait to give it a try! Thanks so much for being our guest today, Roxi!

Michelle B said...

Thank you for sharing this technique. I can't wait to give it a try. Your images are beautiful!

Unknown said...

Gosh, you shown me two things today that I never knew Roxi , thank you ! I will give this technique a try , it's wonderful :)

Cheryl McCain said...

What an interesting technique.....so glad to see Roxi featured here and I'll definitely be playing with the shoot through!

Roxi H said...

Thanks gals! It's always fun to share your passion and hopefully be an inspiration whether it's to one or many. Thanks for having me.

Anonymous said...

Awesome to see Roxi featured, she is so talented. I enjoyed learning about "Shooting Throught".

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