Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III__TS-E90mm f/2.8__1/10 sec at f / 16__ISO 100

I have been watching my crop of sunflowers carefully now for several weeks, observing the flowers closely.  They say timing is everything, and yesterday morning I “harvested” this flower bringing it into my “studio” which in this case was the floor in my dining where there is great window light.   I am growing several species and wanted to catch this one while the strong spiral pattern was still visible.  All flowers are not created equal, so picking the right one is a highly selective process.

University of Cincinatti

This flower was placed in a cup full of water, and placed on top a piece of black velvet.  The lighting here is direct sunlight from one window.  The camera was aimed straight down at the flower.  I made two exposures using my Tilt Shift lens, first photographing one half and then shifting the lens to photograph the other half.  The two photos were merged using Photomerge in Photoshop CS5.

This approach gives me a square frame, which suits this round flower perfectly to me, and gives me a higher res file in case I need to do murals for my art consultant clients.   See photo one of my photos installed at the University of Cincinatti above.

Canon 90mm TS lens

If you haven’t used a TS lens before, I am attaching an iPhone snap I made showing the lateral, off axis shift that the lens can make.

I am also including another recent sunflower photo, made by the same technique.

Enjoy,

Bill

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III__TS-E90mm f/2.8__1/3 sec at f / 19__ISO 100