Younes Bounhar Photography

The Why and the How: July 9 2009

In this section, I usually present a photograph and show you the intent and thought process behind it, which illustrates the point that nature photography is not about getting on location for a point and shoot session. That said, serendipity can definitely play a big part in the entire process, and your challenge as a photographer is to recognise an opportunity when it hits you on the head!

The Why

In this case, it’s not so much a why as it is a “ooooh, I really like that” . Initially, I had set out to photograph this flower in my garden, but adding a personal flavour to the shot. The idea was to recreate sunset light using a CTO-gelled flash and simulating rain using my garden hose. Well, all I have to say is that since I have yet to grow a third or fourth arm, it was not a very successful endeavour. That said, as I tried to slow down the shutter speed to capture the “rain”, I realised that the water flow was hard enough to make the flower move significantly (I was using a macro lens, so small movements seemed to amplify). So, why not try and capture some of that motion in my shot.

The How

I quickly realised that the flash would be of no use in this scenario, so I eagerly dropped it (literally, my clumsiness has been making frequent appearances of late). The rest after that was child’s play combined with a bit of trial and error. I set the focus manually on the flower, stopped the aperture down to maximise depth of field (I wanted motion blur, not bokeh) and increase shutter speed. After that, I simply pointed my hose towards the flower and shot a few frames until I got the sort of motion I was after. The background is made of my green BBQ cover (well I had nothing else), and was far enough that it was out of focus. A final crop was done to eliminate the extra green space…and also simply cuz I like square photos…