It's been rainy here for at least two weeks now, and today I decided that enough is enough - I grabbed my camera and went outside anyway. And, as it turns out, a gray, rainy day is perfect for shooting wildflowers.
And also, as it turns out, bees tend to stay very still when it's wet and cloudy out. Who knew?
The flat light was perfect for shooting these daisies, which tend to "blow out" in the bright sunshine. Their white petals just reflect way too much light back into the lens when the sun shines on them.
I shot these with my beloved Nikon D90, and my equally beloved 24-70 f/2.8 lens. I shot in aperture priority with the aperture opened all the way up to f/2.8. That allowed me to get good exposure in the cloudy, low-light conditions, and also created this awesome background blur.
You can see how thick these daisies are! This group lives across the street from my house. I got to just walk outside today, and photograph them. Nice consolation, I think, for having to put up with two straight weeks of rain.
I did very little Photoshopping to these photos. Just a quick de-fogging, and then I used the Quick Edge Burn Action from Pioneer Woman's Photoshop Actions. If you've never tried these actions before, I highly recommend you download them immediately and try them. I use them all the time.
What's "de-fogging," you ask? Well, let me explain: it's a quick, simple thing you can do in Photoshop. It takes your SOOC photo ("Straight Out Of the Camera") photos and clears them up. Kind-of like wiping off a slightly foggy lens.
To defog, follow these steps: Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask, and use these settings:
Amount: 20%
Radius: 60 pixels
Threshold: 0 levels
That's it. Try it out, and watch your photos magically clear up. I do this as my very first step in Photoshop.
As you can see, it works really well, even on rainy day photos.
