Dandelions in the Breeze

Dandelions in the Breeze (Canon EOS 500D, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens at 200mm (320mm equivalent), 1/500 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100, handheld)

Another beautiful sunny day here today and I popped out to try some shots with my 70-200mm lens on my cropped sensor camera.  This provides a 1.6x additional zoom as the lens is designed for a full frame camera, thus 200mm equates to 320mm when used with this camera.

This first image, in the Sunken garden at Lochalsh Woodland Walks, was taken to try and capture the broader perspective while at the same time retainng shallow depth of field.  It worked reasonably well, but the contrast between the flowers and the background was not as great as I had hoped, so I applied a bit of desaturation to the whole image while retaining a bit more colour and clarity in the flowers and foreground stems.

The following image is of the same clump of dandelions but from closer-in capturing greater detail.  In this case, I feel the flowers stand out much better.  The central flowers are pretty sharp, despite being blown around in the breeze a bit, so I dropped the clarity on the image producing a nice soft feel.

Close-up of Dandelions in the Breeze (Canon EOS 500D, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens at 200mm (320mm equivalent), 1/500 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100, handheld)