Friday, May 08, 2009

Blood red tulips

click photo to enlarge
I've photographed more tulips this year than ever before. Perhaps it's been a good year for tulips. Maybe I've got an increased liking for the flower. Or is that they best satisfy my spring lust for the deep, glowing colours that have been absent over the winter months? Whatever the reason, I've processed 14 photographs of tulips out of the c.50 shots that I've taken. For me that's a very high conversion rate.

I reckon that I process about 10-20% of my RAW images. I discard about 50% of what I shoot, and I keep the RAW files of the other 30-40% in the unprocessed state because I judge them to be good enough to keep "just in case". I don't know how this compares with other amateur photographers. I've always imagined that I take fewer images and convert more than the average snapper, but that's just a feeling, and isn't based on an objective survey.

This is another of the images from the churchyard at Long Sutton in Lincolnshire. A cluster of red tulips had been planted adjacent to some white ones. I positioned myself so that I was shooting into the sun and could capture the lovely effect of the light coming though those blood red petals. I left a band of the white ones along the top of the frame to add contrast and to intensify the colour of the blooms below.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19mm (150mm/300mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On