79/365 - Spring

Today is officially the first day of spring. Say what? Yes, it is!!! But here in Northern California, spring season is nowhere to be seen. It has been raining like crazy for the entire week and in the coming week (as the forecast says).

To compensate and to welcome the first day of spring, the best theme for today are flowers in bloom. Unfortunately, the flowers that I have in my vase were all withered and had died. So, I stepped out of the house (the only time I went out) and grab myself a bunch of blooming flowers from the tree that's infront of our house.

My theme for today is quite timely. I was able to apply the things that I learned from Scott Kelby's The Digital Photography Book, Volume 1.
a) Don't shoot down flowers. Why? Because if we'll do, the result will be average. Hey, it's how we see flowers all the time. So, when photographing flowers, try different angle/POV that we don't see all the time.
b) Shot flowers with zoom lens. With zoom lens, it's easy to make the image tight and blur the background.
c) The ideal times to shoot flowers are during cloudy day, after the rain and/or sunny days (but it has to be in the morning or late afternoon to avoid that harsh light).
e) Shoot flowers in black or white background for dramatic composition.