Persistence of Petals

I've been trying to capture some photos of these coneflowers for a week, but Mother Nature felt I needed to learn a few lessons about planning and patience first.

I'm an early riser and every morning, after my chores I would walk into the backyard to see if the conditions were right. Most mornings were no good, either raining or strong wind. But, at least three of those mornings seemed perfectly still with beautiful soft light. I would get my gear all set up and just as I was about to start taking photos, a breeze would come out of nowhere! You may not be aware of just how little wind it takes to completely ruin your photo. I'm talking about the tiniest breeze here; so light that you can barely feel it.

I tried everything. Timing the shutter presses between breezes, trying to block the breeze with large boards I dug out of the garage... none of it worked.

Then yesterday everything came together and I happened to be all set up in a few magical moments of complete stillness. Just a few though. Enough to get a shot, move my tripod to get one more, and then the breeze started.

I've been experimenting with my new "bendy" LED lights and I think they worked well on this shot. They come with little white dome diffusers and can also be adjusted a bit to focus the light on your subject.

I had one, with the diffuser off, above and to the left focused down into the middle of the flower. The other one was low and to the right lighting the stem. They really add a lot. I thought the first shot without the lights (not shown here) looked great. Then I flipped the lights on and I couldn't believe the difference. They really helped the colors pop and allowed me to keep the chaotic background in deeper shadow.

I really liked the morning dew on this one. The drops on the main petals are cool, but I really like the way the tiny drops in the middle look a bit like frost until you zoom in. Then you can see they are perfect little round droplets.

I had one light placed high and slightly to the right on this one. There was another light way around to the left, but it didn't really do much.

I was sad that I only had time for two different scenes before the breeze picked up. But, two is better than none!