So this Foxglove was growing near my driveway. The flowers were progressing from base to stem for the last week and a half. I kept saying to myself, "I gotta get a shot of that." Didn't get a chance until this morning.
The challenge was not a technical one, although these were on the end of a five foot stem. Any puff of wind set it to swaying. I tried to time it so that it wasn't moving when I took the shot. In the end, I have to confess, I just prayed and sprayed for two bursts. This was the best of 42 shots. There were others that were very close. The way I picked was that there were two hairs entwined on the tip of the right bottom blossom. This one resolved them the best.
I Blocked the morning sun with a white board so as to eliminate halos. Tripod mounted on an maximally extended Velbon carbon fiber. Cable release. I used mirror lockup for some, but camera shake wasn't the problem and it kept me from praying and spraying. (Didn't know that.) Other info is in the exif data. But if you don't want to open it, 40D, 100mm f/2.8 macro at f/16, Av mode, manual focus.
Post processing was levels, a little sharpening in Photoshop Raw (50). I made sure there was no color clipping in the histogram. That's about it.
This was the composition that I chose -- the five in the middle. What do you think?
Image is somewhat degraded due to the 150k limit.
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