I've been having fun with a variety of flowers. But I really thought it would be fun to take pictures of a dandelion being blown!
Here's how it went:
First, a dandelion intact, prior to any blowing. I chose the smallest lens tube in the hope of being able to see a decent amount of the dandelion in focus, but so far as I can tell, macro lens tubes wind up with a super shallow depth of field (compared to a macro lens, I assume). I haven't played with my settings a ton, so maybe that's not always the case... but that's where I'm at, now. Anyway, I just held it in one hand and took the picture with the camera in the other:
It looked pretty in the sunlight but tragically, this was as in-focus as it got. It looked better through my viewfinder so I'm not sure what's up with that. My shutter speed was quite high so it's not a camera shake issue... something about the lens tube causes this and only about 1/3 pictures winds up focused the way I think it will be.
Then I brought it down low enough and summoned my assistants (aka children) to do some blowing.
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| Best one I got from this pose. I didn't love how the grass just disappeared into a green blur. I might as well have had it in front of a green wall or something! |
Interestingly, even using the multiple-frame mode on my (admittedly rather basic and thus probably not that fast) camera, my options were apparently barely-blown or basically-done dandelion. I tried having the kids blow more slowly, but just couldn't get what I envisioned.
Anyway, we went right down to the grass level for the next attempt... and found a patch of sunlight for added shine!
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| Not bad but I wish it was more in focus. |
However, being down in the grass meant my kids were blowing from the top-down and it didn't have the greatest path in my opinion. So, I had them stand on a chair and aimed the shot over the fence so at least the background would be more variable.
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| This would have been PERFECT if it had been in focus... sadly... this was the best I got. Oh well. |
