A close-up sidelong view of a flowering echinacea plant. Click the Image to see a larger version, and to purchase/license.
Another image from my my recent visit to the Japanese Gardens, this time of an Echinacea Flower. I noted my blog was looking decidedly yellow recently since I have posted the Black Eyed Susans on their own, with a little Hover Fly, a Bumble Bee and before that I posted Yellow on Green from my trip to Glenmalure in Wicklow.
While the Hover Fly and Bumble Bee images needed to be all handheld as they were moving quickly from flower head to flower head, I was able to break out my Tripod for this image. I set it up very low so it was looking side-long at the flower head. I was able to use the Live View function on my Camera to set the focus point exactly where I wanted, in this case the petal that was sticking up above the rest. An aperture of f/9 gave me just enough depth-of-field to bring out the texture on the petal. The shallow depth-of-field also allowed for some lovely bokeh where the sun was reflecting off the surround petals. The stem you see is from an Echinacea bud and I will follow this post up with an image of both shortly.
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM
Exposure: 1/30
Aperture: f/9
Focal Length: 100mm
ISO Speed: 200
