Sure, I could have gone to the Botanical Gardens in the city, but what sealed the deal was the fact that Hillwood allows tripods, as long as they are not intrusive or disruptive. The website doesn't say so, but the nice man on the phone did, so off I went. The only issue was that there were far fewer flowers and orchids this time around. They aren't seasonal, per se (they're in a greenhouse), so I'm not sure what the situation was. I'll need to ask next time.
I've taken many pictures of orchids before, but have had to reject a large number due to camera shake, lighting, or issues with busy backgrounds. I decided to tackle as many of these issues as I could, but with a focus on the first item. Here are some of my hits:
Overall, I was pretty pleased. Here's what I liked:
1) I had much better control over my lighting.
2) The pictures are far more crisp, thanks to the tripod (though lugging the thing around was exhausting).
3) These pictures don't look like the ones I've taken in the past. They are original, for sure.
4) Composition has improved - given that I could keep my camera steady, it was far easier to work on that aspect.
Where I should have done better:
1) My saturated colors (the last two pictures) are still not as crisp or defined as I'd like. I think this is an exposure issue, so I need to do research on this for next time.
2) The backgrounds for these four pictures are still a little too busy for my liking. Here's an example of one that I took that turned out better:
Simple black - you can't go wrong.
As far as settings were concerned: ISO 10-200 most of the time. automatic white balance, f-stop at around 3.5 - also for the most part. I wanted to play with depth of field.
Next time - another tripod outing! I'm on a roll!
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