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Two of our granddaughters gave my wife this tulip plant. I set it in front of
a window as the perfect place to create a frame around it. (click to enlarge)
OM-1 Mark II; 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens @ 229mm; 1/500 sec. @ f/5.6 |
A few weeks ago my wife celebrated her birthday. Among other gifts, she received some flowers from friends and relatives—a tulip plant and cut flowers. Whenever flowers are in the house, I try to make a few exposures of them to record the gifts for posterity as well as they give me an opportunity to practice some close-up photography. That is what these images represent. Nothing special here, just having some fun.
For these images, I made a point to use a couple of different lenses than I have in the past. Instead of using normal focal length or macro lenses to photograph the flowers, I decided to experiment a little, test my skills and use lenses that would have never crossed my mind to use in the past.
For these photos I used my OM-1 Mark II and the OM 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens as well as the new OM 50-200mm f/2.8 lens. Neither is designed for this kind of work but, just the same, they worked wonderfully. By the way, the 50-200mm f/2.8 lens is amazing! Seriously. In some other experiments I conducted I found it to be wicked sharp!
All of these photos were made handheld using only natural light. I've included the exposure data for each under the respective image. (It’s too bad the experts tell me I can’t get blurred backgrounds with a micro4/3 camera and lenses. A real shame. 🤣)
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| OM-1 Mark II; 50-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 200mm; 1/250th sec. @ f/2.8; ISO 400 |
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| OM-1 Mark II; 50-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 200mm; 1/250th sec. @ f/2.8; ISO 250 |
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| OM-1 Mark II; 50-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 200mm; 1/250th sec. @ f/8; ISO 250 |
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| OM-1 Mark II; 50-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 200mm; 1/250th sec. @ f/2.8; ISO 500 |
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| OM-1 Mark II; 50-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 200mm; 1/250th sec. @ f/11; ISO 8000 |
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| OM-1 Mark II; 50-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 200mm; 1/250th sec. @ f/2.8; ISO 500 |
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Now for a completely different look, I moved the same flowers from soft, indirect light to direct sunlight. Additionally, I pulled out the little Ricoh GRIIIx and used the 'close-up' function to, again, handhold the following images. The stark difference from soft indirect light and a somewhat surreal appearance and shallow depth of field to purposefully underexposed and high contrast photographs with deep shadows is quite a visual leap.
When looking at the images above, I feel optimistic, soothed, calmed, uplifted and relaxed. They make me feel good about the day. When I look at the images below, I feel pessimistic, tense, worried and my mood is one impending dread. Same subject. Same sunlight. Just different applications of technique. That said, I like both.
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| Ricoh GRIIIx; 26.1mm lens; 1/400th sec. @ f/8; ISO 100 (click to enlarge) |
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Ricoh GRIIIx; 26.1mm lens; 1/320th sec. @ f/8; ISO 100 (click to enlarge)
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Ricoh GRIIIx; 26.1mm lens; 1/400th sec. @ f/8; ISO 100 (click to enlarge)
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Ricoh GRIIIx; 26.1mm lens; 1/500th sec. @ f/8; ISO 100 (click to enlarge)
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I find it fun creating little projects like this around the house. A good way to exercise my shutter finger. It not only tests my creativity and photographic skills, it also can result in some pleasing (or unusual) photographs.
Thanks for looking. Enjoy!
Dennis A. Mook
All content on this blog is © 2013-2026 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.
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