Iris

One of the greatest joys of photography is the simplest one. There are moments of pure visual joy which you can savour and indulge in, but then attempt to hold for ever to revisit and to enjoy. One evening recently, I came upon this stunning Iris in the warm, diffuse evening light in a friend’s garden, and happily had my 60mm EF-S macro lens in my car boot.

I know there is a fine line between enjoying a visual moment and ruining it by spending too much of the time messing about with camera equipment. I was very aware of this and so left the tripod in the car, and just used the macro lens handheld to catch 10 or so handheld exposures. (This meant higher ISO settings and grainier pictures).  I truthfully believe that this helped me enjoy the flower even more, and took perhaps 5 minutes. A good balance in my view. This flower, with it’s iridescent purple and tiger-striped veins deserves to be looked at and thrilled at, not just photographed and archived.

Enjoy.