Iris Inspirations - Images Of The Goddess Flower
Named after the ancient Greek goddess of the rainbow, the Iris is one of nature's most beautiful flowers.
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Description Of Parts Of The IRIS Flower
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Inspired by their stunning appearance, I tried my hand at photographing them. Here a combination of fresh buds and full blooms (at their peaks) make a pleasing subject for my first focused attempt at flower photography:
How I Did It
I made these images with a film camera ["Film?, What's that?"]
- a modest Canon Elan 7NE,
- Quantaray 29-90 mm F3.5-5.6 MACRO Auto Focus Lense,
- Quantaray QSX 9001 Tripod,
- automatic timer for shutter release,
- late-day, available daylight, some natural cloud-reflected light,
- no additional artificial or reflected light,
- took gray-card reading in camera's auto mode, remembered aperture and speed, switched to manual, increased by 1/2 stop, did NOT record exact settings,
- photo lab scanned slides to disc, and I tweaked contrast, cropped and resized for better webpage presentation.
Just for fun, I googled "iris flower images" to see how my images stacked up against some of the best -- a great exercise for judging and improving any sort of photography. Of course, better (and more) equipment might get the best shots, but modest equipment used conscientiously gets some pretty fulfilling results.
The appeal of flowers never gets old, because a deep appreciation of plants does immense good for the planet.