LOML (love of my life aka Mallotte) had brought home an orchid in full bloom a few days back … I picked up the kids from school and had some time to unwind in the late afternoon … saw the orchid in the sala and thought might as well shoot a few pics of the flower … placed it on our kitchen window sill where I thought the backlighting looked ok … took Shot 1 from a 45 degree angle looking down and this is how it turned out:

Hmmm, too much background clutter I thought (although the silis Aling Auring had set out to dry did add a touch of interesting color by way of what T. Connie describes as accidental bokeh) … made me wonder what if I bend down a bit and do a full frontal shot? … so I did that for Shot 2 and here’s what I got:

Ekk, still too much in the background with bokeh of (from left to right) some tree foliage (nice, with some fuzzy light circles), a kalabasa, a wire basket of potatoes (nearly unrecognizable), a part of the wooden frame of the window (too dark; too rectangularly), and the turbo broiler (?!? what the heck was that alien-spaceship-thing doing on the window sill?!?) … but the orchid proper looked good, the late-afternoon backlight being better than I expected … now, let’s try it without the turbo broiler shall we? … and maybe position the kalabasa upstage center right behind the blossom … and Shot 3 came out like this:

Better, but not quite what I wanted … masyadong nagpapapansin si kalabasa! … that upstage center idea obviously didn’t pan out … let’s move that huge dark green and yellow mottled vegetable to the side and try again … and thus we have Shot 4:

Betterer, yes, but … I knew I still was missing out on something … but what, What, WHAT? … maybe it was the instinctive desire to seek the Golden Mean, the Divine Proportion, that urged me to try something really radical like Taking the Picture in Portrait Orientation (of course I know you can tell I’m being facetious) … in any case, that I tried for Shot 5, to wit:

Aha! Aha! That’s the way I like it! (uh-huh, uh-huh) … except that upon closer inspection Manang Kalabasa has these scary Halloween-face spots (do you see the angry eyes, nose and downturned mouth?) and you couldn’t discern even a single one of its pleasing pregnant-belly curves anymore … ok, ok, let me make just one more slight adjustment in the camera angle … and (hold your breath … I mean I’m telling myself “Hold your breath before pressing the shutter down completely”) … and CLICK!

Finally … I am pleased … and very, very happy … to present Shot 6:

Posted in: A HEdCen Oldie's POV, Photo Gallery | | February 2009