Wednesday 21 August 2013

Grammie's Daisies

August 22nd will mark the second year since my Grandmother, Grammie, passed away.  I'm not really the sentimental sort, but Grammie was kind of important to me.  I know that I have the full support of my entire family and friends, but I always seemed to feel it that much more from her.  She was always a big fan of my photographs and one of my big regrets was that she passed away before my I had the chance to have my exhibition.  I really think it's something that she would have really enjoyed.  I remember showing her some photos I had taken of the Victoria Bridge one time and she went on to explain to me how the way that the shadows of the bridge fell on the water must have caught my eye and been the reason why I took the photo. I won't lie, I was impressed.  Most people had commented on how nice the bridge had looked, but nobody had ever mentioned the shadow.  For the record, she was right.  I did take the photo because of the shadow.  If the photo was digital, I'd probably show it to to you all here, but it was taken back when I was still using film.  One of these days I'll get around to scanning all of those old photos, when I have a year or two free to spare.  Since the bridge isn't available, these Daisies will have to do.  I chose the Daisy because it's a flower that I always associated with her.  It might be because they always grew everywhere around the farm that my Grandparents lived on.  Back in the summer when I'd stay with her while my parents would be away on business or vacation, we'd go out into the field and pick them.  I was even introduced to the famous 'She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not' game thanks to Grammie and her Daisies. I like to take pictures of Daisies whenever I see them, just because they remind me of my Grandmother.  Keeping the family connection going, these Daisies came from my Mom's yard where, much like many places, they grow wild pretty much wherever they want to.  I used my 60mm Macro lens to take these photos for two reasons.  The first being that it really brings out the center yellow disc of the flower.  The second being that since these flowers grow wild anywhere, these found themselves around the cement deck in the backyard.  Cement isn't really all that interesting to look at, so by shooting these flowers with a wide aperture, the cement in the background gets blurred, which draws more attention the flower while making what would be a rather drab background, look a little bit more interesting.  In order of appearance, the photographs you see were shot at f/4, 1/60sec, ISO 100 at 60mm.  f/4, 1/50sec, ISO 100 at 60mm.  The third photo was shot using the same settings as the second, and the fourth photograph was taken at f/4, 1/800sec, ISO 400 at 50mm.  Those of  you still reading will have noticed that the final photo was taken at a different focal length than the previous three.  This was done because while the Macro lens does a great job of magnification, it doesn't work so well when you want to take a wide angled shot.  For the final photo, I also wanted to show some of the cluster of Daisies that were all growing together.  The Macro lens couldn't get the job done, but the wide angle worked great.  My Grammie was never big on computers, but I'd like to think that somewhere up in the sky she gets the chance to look down once in a while and sneak a peak at all of the photos that I've been sharing with all of you.  Maybe she's even letting the others up there know what I was thinking when I took the pictures they're looking at.






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