Yes, after 144 days without rain, the heavens have opened!

Starting in the early, dark hours of the morning, rain poured down (mostly drizzle) all day yesterday and continuing into this morning. It was quite chilly, but I still jumped at the chance for some macros. Out into the back yard, in the rain, I went. Unfortunatly, even at ISO-400, many of the shots were just too blurry (1/60 to 1/100) using my 100mm macro. (This being one of the exceptions).

268 clicks later, I downloaded my card, and spent several cozy hours huddled by the computer processing them. I had to run inside every 100 shots or so to warm my numb fingers. (not something desert dwellers usually worry about). Ok, so maybe it wasn't exceptionally cold, but I did become rather wet in the process of kneeling down, hunched over various flowers, trying hopelessly to steady my camera to within fractions of a millimeter while being gently drissled on from above. And wet == cold...at least this time of year.

A note about this shot: Due to the relatively hard to process orange color of these flowers and the dull, overcast, lighting, I found overcontrast/desaturation to be a more effective processing technique for many of the photos I shot today.

[see sister post]

categories: flora macro