Bacon Lettuce Photo

by Joe

You can use any camera to take this shot. All you need is a lot of light, a timer on the camera and a sense of knowing when your camera takes the picture.

1) I set the camera on the ground or on a small tripod (I have a gorillapod)
2) I set the timer on the camera to be audible
3) I pre-focus my camera to the tip of my shoes, then set the camera to manual focus mode so it doesn’t change. I also don’t change the location of where I stand.
4) I take practice shots of jumping at the right moment when the camera takes the picture (this is mastered over time!)
5) It’s best to use a prime lens on your DSLR (if you have one) so you can use the widest aperture to achieve selective focus (I use f/1.4 to 1.8)
6) You need 1/640s shutter speed if you’re not using flash. If there’s lots of light it’s not a problem. IF you are inside a room, you may have to use flash, or crank up the ISO.

What inspired me? Well, I used to take a lot of these photos when I did my 365 Days project. I do it when I’m particularly very happy and since it was my birthday, I thought it was time to do it again.

Exposure: 1/4000
Aperture: f/1.4
ISO: 200

Doesn’t that bokeh look fabulous!?

- - - -
Brought to you by iLovePhotos

by Joe

Thursdaisy was one in a series of daisy photos I’d put up that week. The week before, serendipity (in the form of a few bokeh-filled days amidst banks of the flowers) had brought an informal Bluebell Week. Am a big fan of bluebells and I loved how the photos had turned out. So the next week, I found myself with a bunch of daisy photos. Et voila! Daisy Week was born. The theme weeks have been a fun way to direct the photography for a while.

This shot was heavily cropped from a larger raw file. I shoot exclusively with the 50mmf/1.4 on a 40D and usually shoot with it wide open, sometimes stopping down to f/2.2 if I want a bit less depth of field. This was shot wide open - a set of daisies, this in the bottom right hand corner. I was kneeling to get this from the right angle. With the f/1.4, the light was such and the background was such that the bokeh was guaranteed. I’d played with the shot and wasn’t happy one bit until I isolated this little fella and cropped tight on him. It went through a bit of post processing in Lightroom - took the shadows down a bit, upped the brighter colours, desaturated a tad. I then added a gradient top left to give the daisy a target of light for his streeeetttccchhhhing.

If someone was looking to replicate this shot, you’d want that low aperture and lots of light to help the bokeh behind. The f/1.4 wasn’t strictly necessary, it could have been the nifty fifty f/1.8 (the best value lens on either a Canon or Nikon) rather than the f/1.4 and there wouldn’t be any great difference. In fact, the petals would probably have been in slightly sharper focus… The f/1.4 does give that lovely smooth rounded bokeh though. That and the 40D were the best purchases I’ve ever made.

Wow, some awesome advice on depth of field and the differences between f/1.8 and f/1.4. Thanks for that Harold. Make sure to check out Harold’s photostream.

And just cause he has some great stuff, here is a slideshow of his most recent work:

- - - - Brought to you by iLovePhotos

by Joe

With a craft mad 3 year old we often have pencils out. On this occasion we’d just sharpened them ready for another colouring session. Lining them up just reminded me of the way the teeth interlock on a zipper. It was shot with a Canon 400D with a 50mm f/1.8 lens with screw on macro filters. Colours were brightened post production.

Thanks Nicola and great idea. Next time I see colored pencils around I think I’ll take a shot just like this. Very creative.

- - - - - - -
Brought to you by iLovePhotos

by Joe

“This is a very atypical shot of me - I usually shoot people. Because of this, there is no trade secret I can share, perhaps the principle of selectivity: my macro shots are mostly mediocre at best and I can not produce consistent output on this field. I have published this only because I felt that the colour balance, the sense of motion and having both the “facial features” of the bug and the wings on the same plane of focus was a sufficiently rich set of features to do so. Apart from selection (out of some other shots without motion), fairly strong cropping the image - some 40% left - was the ony creative tool I used (otherwise: 50mm [100mm ecv. in 35mm fov terms] with extension tube, iso200 1/200s, f3.5 and an Olympus E-3). There is perhaps only one thing this and “real” or “professional” macro photography has in common: patience and luck. This bug was shot in our backyard - Spring turned surprisingly hot suprisingly quickly.”

The perspective of this shot is unique in that you can’t get that close and see an insect that clearly. The depth of field and the colors bring out the subject as well. Zsombor Cseres-Gergely is a photographer from Budapest, Hungary. Make sure to check out his website. He’s a bit modest but this is a lovely photo. Well done!

by Joe

This photo is one of the outtakes from my project 52, taken with my Canon Rebel XSi and a 50mm 1.8 lens. I love using textures and layered two onto this photo, a lace texture and an antique cursive writing texture and just went from there playing with different modes and opacities.

Technical Data:
Exposure: 1/40th
Aperture: f/3.2
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 400

Thanks Andrea for allowing us to feature your photo. Great use of a textured overlay. For those of you unfamiliar with “project 52″ it is when you take a photo of yourself once a week for an entire year. It’s a great exercise in creativity! Try it and maybe add your photos to our new BLP flickr group!

———————————————————————————————————————————————–——-

Thank you for reading our blog.  We want to make our blog even better for you.

Your valuable feedback will help us shape Bacon Lettuce Photo to be better and more useful.

Please fill out this short anonymous survey and tell us about your experience.

Thank you!

Click Here to take survey

by Joe

I took my son to the Dallas Arboretum last week, where the “Dallas Blooms” festival is in full swing. It was simply awash with color — a photographer’s dream! The tulips were particularly plentiful, and in every shade you could possibly dream up. I took this photo with my D300 and “nifty fifty” 50mm f/1.8 lens with the aperture set to f/2 — I knew the field of tulips would make for some gorgeous bokeh.