One A Day – 673

Silver Santa Claus in Summer

Littlest Blue

Red-Seeded Grass

Stunning

• Chapultepec, Morelia, Michoacán, México
• July 11, 2015
• Copyright, all rights reserved

All of the shots in this post, except the “Silver Santa in Summer,” were taken with my Sigma 18-250 macro-telephoto zoom. They show the range of this lens from very close to a respectful distance because “Littlest Blue” and “Red Seeded Grass” were taken near their subjects and “Stunning” was taken a respectful distance away (about 20 feet). The idea with these three photos was to use the depth of field to isolate the subject and surround it with a hazy but interesting background. Both of the macro shots were taken hand-held, something I would not have considered doing in the days of film. Cameras were more prone to movement during exposure, film and processing cost money (now it is post-processing time once you have a good memory card), sensitive film was prone to color shifts and grain, and the cameras themselves did not have image stabilization, pinpoint autofocusing and a lot of other little computing features that make it easier to grab pictures like these on the fly. But still, when confronted with situations like these, I shoot a lot of photos to get one good image so that random motion and other things don’t cause the loss of an otherwise good picture opportunity.