Freaky Flower!

[choyt]

I stopped by the roadside to take a picture of this Golden Aster for a wildflower website I've been putting together. It wasn't until I put the picture on my computer and zoomed in on it, that I realized the strange face in the flower!
Would it be obvious if I said I put my Canon A620 on "auto" and snapped the picture? I'm here to learn the fundamentals. Thanks!

[jiminyClickit]

choyt, Welcome

Auto is a useful part of a camera. You can learn from it while getting fairly certain images. Only when you begin to see the possibilities manual settings offer, will you begin to venture into setting your own needs on the camera. Seeing the face is a good start, recognizing details. Compare the color to nature, though, and you can see a change is in order. It's lighter than should be (middle of the day?) and a smaller aperture or higher speed could help bring the tone down, and darken the background some. Practice and DPS will help your website be a showplace for wildflowers (my second favorite photo subject).

[wulf]

It would be great if you could find this flower again and take more pictures although, with the way nature is constantly changing, it would probably have changed and no longer have the face.

I think this will be a great one for a wildflower website. The weakness of the photo is that the petals are overexposed - I'm sure there were more details but they have been lost. Getting flower pictures properly exposed is something that takes some practise (easier in your own home than by the roadside)!

However, while it could have been a better photograph from the technical point of view, I think it is definitely worth hanging onto for the humour.

Wulf

[choyt]

Thanks all! I've always had an interest in photography, but simply haven't taken the time to learn how to take great pictures. Learning about the different settings and what my camera is capable of doing will be a huge help.

I look forward to picking up some tips here and I'll check in to taking a beginners class locally.

Chris