proteus leaf

New Years resolutions anyone? Well mine isn't necessarily a resolution, but I'm hoping to shoot more photographic series and bodies of work this year. I've been inspried by the work of Mark S. Johnson and his book Botanical Dreaming for over a year now -- the beauty he captures in the out-of-focus areas behind the subject (known in the photographic world as bokeh). It's one of the things I'm going to try and do more of in 2009. This image was shot with an SB800 flash through an umbrella above right, using a 50mm Nikon lens with a 36mm Kenko extension tube. The extension tube effectively allows a lens to focus at a closer distance than it normally would - sort of the inverse of what a teleconverter does. But the down side is the extremely shallow depth of field. Used to your advantage, though, you can get some interesting effects. The best way I've found to focus this set-up is to turn off autofocus and simply move your body (and camera) until you achieve focus. So hopefully you'll be seeing more of these images here through the year.