Searching for the sweet spot

Yesterday as I had free time in Edinburgh during the afternoon I decided to go to the Botanics to try out my new Lensbaby. The weather was suitably overcast so it was pretty ideal for flower photography. I had extension tubes with me so I could try some macro shots and was using a monopod. This was not the ideal form of support as I spent all afternoon rocking back and forward on the monopod trying to ensure I got the sweet spot exactly in focus. A tripod would have been much better though the monopod did allow me to work much faster and therefore experiment to a greater degree. I found it easier to leave the sweet spot in the centre of the shot and to rely on cropping to create my final composition though this is where a tripod might have been much more helpful .

I started off the afternoon determined to ensure that I had botanical names for all my shots but this quickly went by the board as many of my shots were of rhododendrons which did not have botanical names attached. In a couple of hours I was able to take a wide range of shots and was waiting with bated breath to put them up on the computer. The final shot has a nice blur to it, which almost looks like motion blur along the veins of the leaves. As to the genus of the plant I am totally lost.

Having looked through my images again I decided that this was probably the better image so my previous image has been consigned to my Blipfolio