Cheers,
Nhat

I really like your black and white dogwood picture. The contrast between sharpness and blur is fantastic! The photo has an etheral and fleeing quality to me. Great capture and thank you for sharing.

Best regards,
lien

Cheers,

Ed

Being able to get to know a place is an under-rated luxury, I think. There are so many places to explore that it’s easy to get into the habit of always going to somewhere new, even though on your first visit you won’t know what you’re looking for or what the light will be like.

And when you DO find a place that you are able to visit over and over, there’s a lot less pressure to “get” a photograph, since you know you can just come back and keep trying.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here!

Thinking about blurred birds, there is one in this article I wrote for Canon:
http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2933

Enjoy, Bill

There are multiple lessons in this tale. One that I particularly relate to is the mixed blessings of being able to return to the exact same spot over and over again. On one hand, there is something very special about getting to know one tree, one rock, one pond intimately in all seasons and all conditions. This can lead to an insightful sort of photography that often isn’t possible when one simply seeks out the “new.” On the other hand, it is possible to get locked into always approaching a subject from the same perspective (and not just in the photographic sense) and miss other ways of seeing.

Your small comment about considering a fast shutter speed to stop the motion of the flowers caught my attention and made me think of a personal story from the past year. One of my projects is to photograph the pelicans that skim along the coastline not far from where I live. I’ve begun to learn their ways such that I can begin to predict where and when and how to photograph them – and I can get “sharp” photographs of these magnificent birds.

However, one day last winter I was at a beach where I often photograph and it was dark and cloudy and a bit foggy. I had a long lens on the camera, but there just wasn’t enough light to get the shutter speed that I “needed.” I almost decided not to shoot, but then figured I’d just go ahead and use whatever shutter speed I could manage and try to follow the birds with the camera as them skimmed inches above the sand.

I ended up with very soft, blurred, and diffused images with just a few relatively sharp components – not at all like what I usually have tried for with these birds. But, in the end, these “fuzzy” images, for me at least, capture far better what I perceive to be the nature of these birds and the lives they live.

And, yes, I like those “dancing” dogwood blossoms!

Dan