Buttercups

Posted: July 27, 2009 
Filed under: Floral
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I am not entirely sure – which happens sometimes! – if this is, indeed, a buttercup.  I very much welcome anyone else’s input (provided it is educated and not wild speculation) as to what species of aquatic plant this is.  I took this shot in Howard Ferguson Forestry in Kemptville, ON.  This is an aquatic plant found in southeastern Ontario, for anyone hoping to help me properly identify this flower.  Regardless, I took this with my Nikon D200 and 70-300mm zoom set to 200mm and near it’s closest focusing distance without the macro setting (1.5m).  I did not use a close-up filter for this shot.  What I did, however, is choose my composition carefully so that the background was heavily shadowed.  Then, I underexposed the shot so that the background would become a strong black.  This shot was actually taken in large JPG format, and it was one of my first digital photos before I began to use RAW format.  So, I boosted this in Nikon’s photo processing program ( forget the name) and not in adobe.  When you are trying to get a clear subject against a black background, and you want to be able to use natural conditions to do so and not contrive some artificial ones, then it is important to use the spot meter or center-weighted meter system on your digitial camera.  If using the center-weighted system, make sure it is set to its smallest setting, which on the D200 is 6mm.  What this means is that 75% of the light reading that the camera gives you will be taken from the 6mm circle in the center of the viewfinder, unless you specify the camera to take the light-reading from a different point.  The other 25% of the reading will be an aggregate reading from the rest of the frame.  The spot meter is preferable for my style because it will take 100% of the light reading from the 3mm diameter circle in the center of the viewfinder (well, really from the lens, but hopefully you understand what I am trying to get at here).  Now, using this metering system, what you want is a subject that is fairly close to correct exposure, though it’s OK if the subject is a half-stop underexposed.  Secondly, you want the background to be at LEAST 2 stops underexposed COMPARED TO the subject.  You can boost exposure in Adobe Photoshop if you are taking photos in their RAW format; however, if there is not at least this two stop difference, boosting an underlit subject will only serve to boost and overly lit background.  It is the difference in exposure that is crucial in getting a nice black background using purely natural lighting conditions.  The third necessary variable is your keen eye for composition.  You must choose a background carefully that is as ubiquitously black as possible.  One piece that is brighter than the rest will show up in your composition as a brighter piece of the background, and can marr you nice black shadow.  If your composition is just too bright, but you definitely want the black background and don’t want to walk away from the scene, then a couple filters can help. One filter is a neutral density filter, which is a grey filter that won’t affect colour but will reduce your exposure by 2 full stops.  Another filter to try is a circular polarizer.  The amount of light reduction from this filter is dependant on the angle at which is it set.  For maximum light reduction, rotate the filter so that the little white dot on the outside of the filter ring is set to 90 degrees from the light source, i.e., from the angle fo the sun’s rays.  This can be difficult to see, so just bracket with different angles and you’ll eventually get what you want.