Went to Portland today for some shopping, good eating and time hiking around the Hoyt Arboretum. The day started out with a few sprinkles but ended up being a perfectly nice day. While we were hiking around the park I noticed this interesting tree. It turned out to be a Japanese Hornbeam. The interesting thing about this tree is leafy-bracted racemes of fruit (not shown in this photo).
Sometimes when I go out shooting I like to challenge myself to use just a single lens. Sure I have several that I can choose from and swap on or off whenever I feel the need. But it’s also fun to go out and challenge oneself to create a shot with a single lens. Today was the day for the Canon 50mm f/1.8. For a lens that cost less than $100 I love this thing. It’s sharp and having f/1.8 is a bonus. So that is what I had on my camera today.
I liked the way the light was playing through the leaves of the tree. I knew that I could probably create an interesting background pattern (bokeh) so I set my aperture to f/1.8 and focused on some leaves. Shooting wide open like this provided a razor thin depth of field (DOF) and created this interesting bokeh. I love how the leaves just seem to appear out of the background. I really like this shot.
What about you? Do you like this photo? Do you have any suggestions on how to make it better? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Just leave a comment below.
Oh yes. Very good picture. You’ve chosen the appropriate background (enough but not too much light; the same one can say about the light in general in this picture). What you could have done better? Difficult to say for me. A less steep angle view on the leave? That seems not possible without changing the whole image. Some illusion of geometric bodies in the background seems to be there (it is not flat). And there is some unquiteness what makes the whole picture interesting (balance between chaos and order). So, go on. Have a nice journey
@Felix – Thanks so much for stopping by. It’s good to meet you here. I may post a few more images that were similar to this that had different angles. I appreciate your comments.