Backyard Photography

Colors of the Tropics

California, U.S.A. 2012: A Monarch Butterfly samples the nectar of a Bottlebrush plant.

I recently bought a new camera. One with enough megapixels for the advertisers to boast that it is a replacement for a medium format camera. Medium format cameras have a 4 inch by 5 inch negative and you can get fabulous detail from those negatives. One of my favorite teachers used one, even going so far as taking one to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I always admired the detail of those images, but I never aspired to shooting with that camera. It was too large and difficult to load in the field. Now, thanks to technology, I can have my cake and eat it, too. I have my increased megapixels which give me detail as good as, if not better, than the 4×5 negative. This means that I can shoot a butterfly, who is only a small part of the photograph, crop to highlight only the butterfly, use Alien Skin’s Blow Up 3  to enlarge the whole thing and have a huge photo of a butterfly (16 x 20) to display in my home. 

We have a row of bottlebrush plants between our home and the neighbor’s. Bottlebrush are common here in California, but when I first came to live here, I thought they were exotic. They are called bottlebrush because that is what they look like: a brush to clean a baby’s bottle. I first noticed them when I was a newlywed.  We toured Hearst’s Castle in San Simeon, California where the garden was filled with them. I was amazed by the bright, red,  feathery, blossoms and wanted them in my yard, too.

A good book on nature photography, done in your backyard, is Photographing Nature by Ralph A. Clevenger.