Ah, the thrill of a new toy, which for me is a new camera. These images were taken with a Nikon AW110 using the macro setting. Reading the manual, yes, I’m one of those people, I couldn’t resist testing out their claim that it could focus as close as 1cm.

My subject choice today was a variety of three-dimensional flowers, resulting in an overall soft effect except for one sharp focal point. Macro photography often creates images with shallow depth of field. Of course it was breezy outside as our 95 degree heat wave began to be pushed eastward by a cold (less warm) front. Patience and timing were required to allow the camera time to focus on such close range subjects.

No-wind is rarer than one realizes until one tries to photograph a flower or grass. My preference for hand-held image creations along with nature’s continual animation provide continual challenges in creating crisply sharp, artistically lit and composed images. This just means I must spend more time outdoors which for any nature photographer is an appreciated gift.