Close up of the large stamen of a yellow flower with a background of the same flowers.
I took a trip up to our Japanese Gardens based in Kildare last Friday. It has been over two years since I last visited the gardens so it was high-time for a return visit. Along with the gardens the site houses our National Stud and Saint Fiachra’s Garden which offers woodland and lakeside walks.
I ended up spending very little time in the Japanese Gardens as there was little in flower, and the sun was far to harsh to shoot any of the nice architectural features. I instead occupied myself around the woodlands and lake in Saint Fiachra’s Garden. I was in my element here as there was so much still left in bloom, offering a riot of colour with many bees and butterflies flutering about.
This is the 1st in a serious of images I captured on the day showing just one of the colours on display, a very vibrant yellow. You can also see from the background that this was no lonesome flower. Shooting handheld with my 100mm Macro is always fun given the limited depth-of-field. On this occasion it was bright enough to open the aperture to f/7.1 albeit with the ISO set to 200. Opening up the aperture by this much allowed me to capture the complete stamen and some of the petals within the range of acceptable focus while still allowing a fast enough shutter speed for handholding.
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM
Exposure: 1/120
Aperture: f/7.1
Focal Length: 100mm
ISO Speed: 200
