Saturday, June 22, 2019, Wildflower Photography Class, Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO

We signed up for a photography class at Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO. Our registration fees all went to support the park and Visitor's Center operations so it was a worthwhile cause.

The class was taught by Bob Falcone, also known as "Hiking Bob." He has quite an online presence with a webcast and a column in the Colorado Springs paper. He is an avid hiker and loves taking photographs of wildflowers. He made it clear he was a photographer, not a botanist so he could not tell us the names of flowers, he just liked to capture them with his camera.

We started with a classroom discussion of equipment. As you might expect, he showed us thousands of dollars worth of equipment but he said we could take awesome pictures with any level of camera, even a cellphone. Two things I will be looking to find are a nice diffuser ($13) and an extension tube for my camera ($45).

It was touch and go with the weather but the rain held off and the winds were pretty calm so our outdoor exercises went pretty well. In fact, the clouds provided diffuse light that was ideal for close up photos of the local flora.

All but the last three pictures below were taken in an area maybe 100 feet by 100 feet. At first glance, I saw a lot of Yucca and a few various small flowers sprinkled around. When we really started looking we found such a variety of flowers and colors it was amazing. 

My little green friend was a happy accident.

Bob went into detail about how to manually defocus the background with an SLR. Thank goodness my little sony has a "background defocus" mode.

Bob highly recommended we use a tripod and remote shutter release. We brought them but it is so cumbersome to do it that way. I can take ten shots handheld in the time it takes to set up one with the tripod. (One out of ten will surely be in focus.) David used his at first, but I noticed he gave it up, too.

To shoot this yucca, my camera was a few inches from the ground facing up to the sky, try that with a tripod.

I had no idea dandelions were so complicated.

Bob explained that all the magic happens in post-production. I couldn't agree more.

We so seldom use our cellphone to take pictures, but if you do, Bob highly recommends you download "snapseed," a sophisticated photo editing app for Android or Apple.

Truly, most of Bob's advice was geared toward capturing photos with equipment that could be blown up to large prints. (It's all about the sensor size rather than the number of pixels.) I suspect mine, shot with my little sony, would be grainy beyond the 4x6.

Much was said about not disturbing live plants just to get a photo (clearing out dead debris is allowed).

The ground was so thick with tiny barrel cacti it was a challenge not to step on them.

Truly, an overcast day is the best time to capture flowers...

...because once the sun makes an appearance the shadows can be a distraction.

I see a stick figure playing in the center of the second posy. 

I'd like to say that I was trying to capture the bee coming in for lunch, but he, too, was a happy accident.

Bob handled questions as he wandered around pointing out potential subject matter in the field. He had a good eye for technical detail - color, contrast, focus and framing.

On the way back to the car we decided to take a few pictures of flowers planted around the visitor's center.

The session was very entertaining and we felt like we learned something about photographing flowers that will hopefully show in our future work.