Succulent Impressions
I was playing around this afternoon with a 1.8 50mm lens that I use whenever I want to create bokeh, or an out of focus background. This plant is in our garden and was mostly in direct sunlight, and I used no flash. The blurry orange color in the background is a sticks-on-fire plant which turns bright orange in the winter, and is about 8 feet tall. The subject plant is an aeonium succulent, and I got in very close to it using a Kenko extension tube on the lens for close focusing. I captured a few of the leaves on the edge of the plant, but as you can see almost the entire image is out of focus - by design. I like the impressionistic look here, and I decided when I was done to do a more conventional look at this plant using a macro lens and small aperture to put everything in sharp focus. In other words, the complete opposite of this image. I did use a strobe with softbox for that image. Down below in the comments you can see the fully focused look at the plant.
If you like pictures of cactus and succulents, you might not hate my Cactus and Succulents set. That set can be seen here www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/sets/72157633383093236/...
Succulent Impressions
I was playing around this afternoon with a 1.8 50mm lens that I use whenever I want to create bokeh, or an out of focus background. This plant is in our garden and was mostly in direct sunlight, and I used no flash. The blurry orange color in the background is a sticks-on-fire plant which turns bright orange in the winter, and is about 8 feet tall. The subject plant is an aeonium succulent, and I got in very close to it using a Kenko extension tube on the lens for close focusing. I captured a few of the leaves on the edge of the plant, but as you can see almost the entire image is out of focus - by design. I like the impressionistic look here, and I decided when I was done to do a more conventional look at this plant using a macro lens and small aperture to put everything in sharp focus. In other words, the complete opposite of this image. I did use a strobe with softbox for that image. Down below in the comments you can see the fully focused look at the plant.
If you like pictures of cactus and succulents, you might not hate my Cactus and Succulents set. That set can be seen here www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/sets/72157633383093236/...