Early springtime at Filoli is great fun for photographers. Lots of bulbs blooming – in planters all around the grounds and buildings and in the huge daffodil field.
I was at Filoli at the 11 AM opening this morning – as were several other photographers. I crawled around on the floor in the Conservatory with a woman shooting with a Konica as we tried to get the right light angle on the hyacinths.
My first few shots this morning were taken with the Canon 24-105mm f/4 IS lens on my Canon EOS 5D Mark II. While admiring the hyacinths, I switched to one of the most fun lenses in my kit bag – a Lensbaby 2.0 (now renamed the Muse). The Lensbaby provides a sharp area of focus that you can manually move around while composing the shot. The rest of the shot will be delightfully out of focus and blurred – resulting in a beautiful effect with bright flowers and foliage. You can see some of this effect in the photo above. Sorta looks like I did a drive-by shooting of that plant, doesn’t it! 😉
On Canons, you shoot with the camera in Aperture Priority mode when shooting with a LensBaby. Since the camera can’t control the LensBaby lens’ aperture, you lock the aperture and the camera then must adjust the shutter duration to get a good exposure.
The full set is now available on Flickr – as is this collection of all my Filoli photos.