Tag: Raindrops

Friday Floral – Plan B

Published on by tbeckerphotos2 Comments

This week’s Friday Floral post is Plan B for poinsettias and raindrops, perfect macro photography subjects. The images I had made the night before of poinsettias with raindrops  had too much noise, but I couldn’t get them out of my head.  I needed and wanted to try again.  Wanting to make some quality images, I decided to go to the Desert Botanical Garden.  It had rained again during the day and I was hopeful to recreate the scene from the night before.  It was late afternoon and the light was completely different.  Would I be able make the images I was visualizing?

Upon arrival and walking to the entrance there were several beautiful poinsettias.  They looked like they had clear jewels or diamonds scattered on them, obviously, I was fixated on the scene from the night before. That would be strange for the garden to do was my first thought.  Getting closer I realized it wasn’t jewels or diamonds, but very large raindrops!  The raindrops didn’t look like rubies that I was hoping for, but these were just as beautiful.  To try to recreate the images from the night before, staying until long after sunset would be necessary.  Too much going on this time of year, so that wasn’t an option.  I haven’t given up on photographing poinsettias with raindrops looking like rubies, Plan C is always an option and rain is in the forecast this weekend!

Poinsettias and Raindrops

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While out and about tonight, I saw a large grouping of red poinsettias and it had just rained.  Flowers and raindrops, two of my favorite macro photography subjects!  And only a handful of people around.  Unfortunately, I only had my compact camera with me and oh how I wish my regular camera gear had been with me!

The raindrops in the very low available light looked like rubies laying on the petals.  I had to raise the ISO to 3200 creating an extreme amount of noise in the images.  Even with post processing in Lightroom and using the noise reduction tool, the images still look grainy.  Additional noise reduction made the petals too smooth, so I settled for the grain.

The forecast is for more rain tonight and tomorrow morning.  I’m hoping the forecast is correct and that I can attempt to make some similar images with my regular gear.  As these are displayed in public, but on private property, I’ll need to make sure I have permission to shoot with my regular macro photography setup.  If not, I already have a Plan B!  Who can resist beautiful red poinsettias and raindrops?