Photowalk 20 - Even More Macro At Stokes Bay

Trying to take landscape photo's in the middle of a hot, sunny day is never a great idea. By the time I had got to the beach, with the hope of some nice shots, the Sun had burned off any remaining clouds, but a short walk around the surrounding countryside brought some interesting macro captures....

I did try and take a few landscapes on this Photowalk, but with the sky so bright and featureless, they weren't worth including. I've decided to start using the larger images in the posts so you don't have to click through to Flickr to see them, but if you do click through you can see the really large versions.

Wild Lilly Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Super Macro, Aperture Priority, F3.5, 1/800th, ISO 100, Focal Length 6mm, Hand-held

I was walking along the path beside the caravan park down at Stokes Bay, Gosport, and saw these amazing Wild Lilies growing next to the river (you can just about see them on the video). I shot loads of different angles, trying to avoid the glare from the Sun, and settled on this almost abstract version, given a sepia look in Photoshop Elements.


Aneme.. Anemo... Flower! Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Super Macro, Aperture Priority, F3.5, 1/500th, ISO 100, Focal Length 6mm, Hand-held

There were these amazingly coloured flowers popping out of this thistles, nice shot, but I should not have worn shorts!


Spikey! Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Super Macro, Aperture Priority, F3.5, 1/150th, ISO 200, Focal Length 6mm, Hand-held

This is one of the Thistles without it's flower. Shot from above, trying to get it all in shadow (you've got to get pretty close with the S5700 in Super Macro Mose.) In Elements I played around with the contrast and Saturation on the different colour channels to try and emphasize the main subject.


Likeness Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Super Macro, Aperture Priority, F3.5, 1/1000th, ISO 200, Focal Length 6mm, Hand-held

More Thistle type things.... I should have reduced the ISO for this one, to stop it becoming quite so overexposed. If I had been shooting in Program Mode, the camera would have done it for me, but shooting at my cameras maximum Shutter Speed does mean there's little camera shake blur. I'm going for a reduced Depth of Field look in most of these images, so I'm shooting at the S5700's widest aperture: F3.5.


Encounter II Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Super Macro, Aperture Priority, F3.5, 1/175th, ISO 200, Focal Length 6mm, Hand-held

When you have such contrasting colours, as in this photo, one of the best ways of adjusting it is to increase the contrast slightly, play with the levels a bit, but then really adjust the Saturation of the individual colour channels with a Hue / Saturation Adjustment Layer in Elements / Photoshop. Just nudge the sliders around, and bear in mind that for some reason yellow often makes a bigger difference to foliage than green. Don't ask me why.


Fallen Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Super Macro, Aperture Priority, F3.5, 1/640th, ISO 200, Focal Length 6mm, Hand-held

Not to every-ones tastes this one, sorry if it offends.


Conclusion

Although I was disappointed at the lack of landscapes, I captured some OK macro's, and managed to play around with some unusual angles too. Thanks for watching / reading.

Cheers, Rob.

ps, A note on camera exif data. Being a bridge camera, my S5700 has a crop factor because the sensor is a lot smaller than on a dSLR, so when you're looking at the focal lengths bear in mind that the S5700 has a focal length range of 6-63mm, which is the equivelent of 38-380mm in a 35mm dSLR. Also the aperture and shutter speeds given are approximate, as for some reason sometimes they're different in the PC exif data than what I actually took, but its usually just the next step up or down.