I took these photos at the Central Park Conservatory this weekend. I can't tell you how hard I worked to get these just perfect. I've been shooting in manual mode on my Nikon more often and I love it. Manual is literally just shooting the way you would with a regular film camera if you can remember what that was like. There was no auto focus, no little red light or beeping alert telling you what to do. It gives you control over focus, light metering and depth of field. Fortunately, my Nikon give me the option to go back to a somewhat analog style of shooting. I don't have a macro lens on my camera but I thought I would play around in manual to get this somewhat macro close effect. It came out so much better than I imagined.
Can we talk about how absolutely miraculous the structure of flowers are? I was just in awe looking at these forms of life up close. There is so much going on in the world of plants that we don't know about. As insignificant as it may seem to us, our survival is dependent in many ways upon their ability to function in a balanced eco system. I now begin to understand why Stevie Wonder was moved to make a double album about them for the soundtrack of a small documentary of the same name. There really is a secret life there.
