By Ted Grussing
… the Argentine Giant Cactus produces one of my favorite blooms and reminds me of the Singularity in Greg Bear’s book Eon … it just goes on forever and as you gaze into the bloom you have to wonder, does it end? Or does it keep going?
I shot this five years ago in a neighbor’s yard with a Canon 5D MK II and a Canon 100mm macro lens. When I shoot flowers I take them as they are; I do not spritz them, shield them from wind or use any reflective device to improve lighting and I do not use flash or any other form of non-natural lighting. Also I handhold the camera for all of my shooting and although I own several fine tripods I almost never use them. I do crop the images and since I shoot everything in raw format I do process the image in Photoshop so that I end up with what I saw; also in this image I added some post crop vignetting to keep your eye in the photo … make that a slight darkening of the corners and edges.
Really fun going through my floral collection. It looks like the last time I shot this bloom was in 2014, so this year I will go nuts and get maybe a hundred or so new photos of them. Somewhere I think I have a composite I did where Q (predecessor to One) was hiding way back inside the flower. Need to find that and also do a new one with One in there.
Was fun focusing on flowers this week and thinking of doing composites next week … they are the fun and creative art I enjoy … everything from Astro Squirrel to a new galaxy exploding out from the San Francisco peaks. I like the idea and next week will be strictly composites.
I found a neat series on Netflix titled “Tales by Light”, a series about photo shoots by some top photographers and a look at the thought process that goes into their shoots: https://www.netflix.com/title/80133187 on Netflix and: http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/tv/tales-by-light/ on National Geographic. Highly recommend it.
Another week coming to a close … it has been terrific and hope yours has been too … always choose for the day to be good and it will be.
Back Monday … smile and keep breathing
Ted
Love men and truth, and poverty most like will dine with you,
But peace will feed your soul.
— Max Ehrmann
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The easiest way to reach Mr. Grussing is by email: ted@tedgrussing.com
In addition to sales of photographs already taken Ted does special shoots for patrons on request and also does air-to-air photography for those who want photographs of their airplanes in flight. All special photographic sessions are billed on an hourly basis.
Ted also does one-on-one workshops for those interested in learning the techniques he uses. By special arrangement Ted will do one-on-one aerial photography workshops which will include actual photo sessions in the air.
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