It’s another weekend already… Not much camera activity on my part, other than taking a quick peep in the flower dome. Currently ongoing, it’s the French Faire. The main attraction of this time round is the French-inspired flower field. The scale is definitely not as grand as like the Tulips where tulips are planted all around the dome.
The main purpose of this round is to ‘recce’ the newly planted flowers. So I just have a couple of quick shots before I moved on for coffee with my friends in the area. So this above one shot is the only one for the week.
Technical Stuffs
As mentioned in previous posts, I like to use shallow depth of field (DOF) to create the isolation between the subjects and the background. But shallow DOF in close-up zone also means that there will be lesser focused area. For the above shot, I have tried apertures ranging from f2.8 to f5.6, but, each time I step down the aperture (f2.8 > f3.5 > f4 > f5.6), the background becomes more messier… So there is a need to trade off some details for a ‘better’ background (there are a few distracting elements in the frame, but I didn’t want to shift it away as the facility staffs are nearby… Any attempts to touch the flowers on display will result in some unwanted reaction from them). So I settled for f2.8 even when not all the flower buds are in focus. But it’s good enough for me.
Another thing I’ve also been trying to practice recently is to move myself instead of turning the zoom ring. This applies to many things, not only close-up or portraits. But in this case of close-up, the difference between a 60mm and 70mm is large and it’s very obvious in the background. Using a wider length, one will get more DOF and which will in turn makes the background messy.
Being honest, after returning from Mt Bromo, I didn’t feel like shooting much landscapes or cityscapes in Singapore. Maybe it’s because I have yet to explore areas that are hard to access via public transport. But for now, I have enough of shooting the CBD and Marina Bay Sands. I probably won’t be shooting the ‘iconic’ ones anytime soon, unless there’s a good reason for it.
So, meanwhile I’m still in my ‘lost’ mode, I will be shooting mostly flora stuffs or other genre I seldom touch. The next trip to re-shoot the French Faire will be soon… *May need to add a few props to get better lighting before that*
Regards,
YK
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