A Little Plant Photography

I'm on a  bit of a new adventure now. I've decided to begin teaching myself more about plants. I hope there's still enough time in the warmer part of the year to accomplish something with this new quest. Along with learning about plants, I've decided that I want to also improve my photography.

I want to go from shooting anything that moves as quickly as I can to actually knowing and understanding better how to set up my photos. I want my pictures to look beautiful when I want them to. I already get lucky sometimes, but I mostly end up with stuff that looks like what I have for you today. It can look nice, but I have some room for improvement.

I have no idea what the plant is in the photo above. I only know that it's covered in those sharp spines. It also has these purple flowers that look similar to clover. These are things I know now that I should be observing. I used a flash on the camera to bring out the spines. Very small progress in both areas.

I do know what the above plant is. Can you guess by looking at the picture? This stuff grows wild all over this area. I'll take pictures of it, but I will never even touch the stuff. It's not poisonous or anything like that, but it can be illegal in the right circumstances.

I didn't get a better picture of this hemp weed than this one. I was in too much of a hurry. That's something else I need to teach myself; I need to slow down a bit. I need to take the time to examine my subjects a bit and to decide the best way to get a good picture.

I used the camera's flash on this one, and it seemed to work the best on a few things. These plants seemed to evade the camera's automatic focus. I need to slow down and remember to use the manual focus on some things. I don't need to hurry so much on non-moving targets.

I did remember those lessons after a bit of time. One more thing to learn is how to better use the light around me. I'm paying more attention to that, but I'm still learning. All of that will also help give me better pictures so I can better examine just what plants I might have.

You may have noticed the little yellow critter in the picture above. He'll be the subject of my next post. After remembering a few good photography lessons, I got some better pictures of him. I have no idea what he is yet, but I'll be looking to find out.

Wait! After a quick check, I found the identity of the bug! I'll share that information with you, as well as some better photos, in my next post. See you soon.