Perry's Water Gardens Franklin, NC 7/02/2009

A little glow around the edges with some extra Gaussian blur.

A sharper version of #1 without the blur.

Lots of beautiful backlight early in the morning. I'd like to go back and start shooting around sunrise if they will allow it.

Just opening...blooms at all levels of maturity, from buds to completely spent, are abundant.

Very mature bloom in mid-day sun. With a polarizer, good images were possible even in full sun.

Loved this immature bloom...great care had to be taken to get the background that you want due to the incredible number of blooms.

Big ttime crop...probably not a candidate for a big print

Many opportunities to add OOF color to you BG in whatever way you wish.

Not every beautiful flower was a water lily.

Bees are on EVERY flower...if not right now...just wait 30 seconds!!! Easily included or avoided as you prefer.

As the day wore on and the sun got brighter a polarizer was the most important accessory. A 400mm or even 500 mm lens is very helpful to reach the more distant blooms. This image was captured with a 100-400 mm lens with 1.4 TC on a 1.3x camera making for effective maximum focal length of over 700mm at f8.0.

Another example of the value of the polarizer...these lily pads were almost blown out to the naked eye!!

In addition to all types of bees, dragon flies were everywhere. Not quite as easy to photograph!

A little Charles Needle effect!!!...simultaneously zoom and twist using a long exposure time. The Singh-Ray variable ND filter is invaluable for this type of shot to reduce the light. This image is with the 100-400 lens. I found this technique to be MUCH easier with the 70-200 due to the difference in zoom operation.

A different version of image 4 with different lighting effects applied in Photoshop.

Difficult to get close enough to blooms for good ultra wide angle shots...but some available.

One more UWA effort.