At Home

Yesterday I photographed some Easter lilies that are in full bloom on our dining room table. I was not sure where I would end up with them and had no particular image in mind but I thought the white narrow conical throat of the petals with the yellow stamens would make for exceptional photographs. Once I started composing and photographing them, I moved my focus point closer and closer into the flower. The depth of field became shallower and shallower unleashing the beautiful abstract forms of the petals in the back of this Easter lily. I tried to keep some reference to a flower by keeping stigma, carpel and stamen in the foreground of the composition out of focus and laying the focus point into the back of the trumpet flower where the stamen come together. I used a 80mm macro lens with polarizing filter at f/3.5 resulting in a 1/25 seconds shutter speed. The low aperture setting and the close distance to the stigma, carpel and stamen in the foreground provided me with the minimal depth of field for what I had in mind. Nature keeps surprising me with its amazing never ending supply of photographic objects to explore at our door steps!