Spring is a time of new-birth and returning colour to the land around us. The symbolism of new beginnings can often give new inspiration for approaches and techniques. Before the daffodils and tulips of March come the crocuses of February.
I headed out on an epic photographic journey to my back garden. Quite a trek as you can imagine. A small clutch of crocuses were in an area of shade on a bright day, and I decided to make some close ups of them. I used two different lenses (a 100mm macro lens and a 50mm) with and without extensions tubes. The first picture is a useful way of setting the scene.
The way that extension tubes work is both their joy and their sorrow. In my case they have no electrical link to the camera body thus I had no control over aperture selection. You do end up working very close in to your subject, mere centimeters away. This closeness and magnification allows us to see details we wouldn't usually be able to see with the naked eye, but also means that the area of the subject that stays in focus is tiny. In the example below literally millimeters.
Focusing can be a hit and miss affair but to see something so exquisitely beautiful so close up opens up a new world. I deliberately left the composition to reveal to us what the subject was. It is clearly a plant, and a view we have seen before, but not often in such proximity.
I think it works on many levels, and a more abstract approach coupled with such limited depth of field would have presented too much of a mystery. Whereas I hope this picture reveals a little more of the splendour of the humble crocus.
