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| Dame's Rocket |
While you can certainly use tripods in your botanical photo taking, I find that lugging the extra equipment around and then setting it up destroys the ability to capture the essence of simple beauty and the sincerity of the moment that Mother Nature presented to us. All my nature photography is done without tripods and without "gardening" or otherwise setting up the shot. I take the shots as I find them for I believe that Mother Nature has the best eye for photo composition.
But since all the shots are taken by hand, it requires more - if you'll excuse the pun - focus put into each shot otherwise the result is a fuzzy mess. To do this, isn't hard and it starts with a simple breath. Take a breath and hold it for just the moment it takes for you to snap the picture. Amazingly in that held moment, you become so
mindfully aware of your body and its every motion. It is a moment of mindful meditation where you become more aware of the tiniest of details - things that are often below your threshold of awareness. And in that attentiveness, you become still and you become very focused. So with breath held, body stilled, and your attention sharpened, you look to your subject and gently press the camera's button.
Give it a try. What moments of gentle beauty can you capture?
To inspire you, I captured the shot above and the couple below on a ten minute walk this morning...
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| Apple blossoms (I love the blush of pink) |
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| Banded snail on dandelions |
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| New foliage and flower clusters on wild grape |
