Welcome to In A Vase On Monday – my first vase of 2015! I invite you to join me every Monday as I make a posy of flowers or foliage from what is looking good in my garden and link to Cathy at Rambling In The Garden, who started this lovely meme over a year ago.
After the excess of festive decorations I am in a simple mood at home. Having packed away all my lovely glittery baubles and lights I have started my annual ‘big sort out’. January is the month when I turn my attention to my home, emptying out cupboards and dusting off cobwebs – what does not get done this month will have to wait until next year – January is the only month when I have the time or inclination for this sort of deep clean.
To add to my home detox I fancied something simple and scented from the garden for my vase this week. Still in its mid winter sleep, there is not a lot blooming in the garden, although the snowdrops are very close to flowering and the hellebores are in bud. What better way to add fragrance and greenery to my kitchen than with a jug of mediterannean herbs – which at this time of year are limited in my garden to the winter stalwarts of rosemary and bay. For another layer of scent I added some branches of eucalyptus – my young tree is coppiced every spring to keep it small and covered in young growth, so I need to make use of what I can before the excess gets composted.
I find the scent of rosemary and bay irresistible and always stop to rub the leaves through my fingers on a walk. I am a relative newcomer to the delights of culinary herbs – although always delicious the food of my northern upbringing did not include many herbs – a bit of parsley with fish, mint sauce with lamb, Paxo sage and onion stuffing and a sprinkle of white pepper over the dinner plate was as far as it went. These days it is hard to imagine a meal without the addition of herbs and 2015 is the year that I am determined to add a dedicated herb bed to my garden.
I mentioned yesterday the Christmas present my lovely husband gave to me – a 100m f2.8L macro lens. The first three photos above were taken on my favourite 50mm prime lens – I then switched to my new macro for the picture above and I love the dreamy quality it has added to the photos.
It also allows me to get much closer to my subject and picks up details like the ridging on the rosemary spikes that I would not have noticed as I chopped the herb for dinner. The candle I have used in these pictures is a lavender fragrance from Diptyque, which goes well with my mediteranean theme. As I sorted out cupboards in my pantry today I came across another candle, scented with bay and rosemary, so perfect to burn in my kitchen tonight.
It may be my imagination, but the new lens seems to somehow capture more light. I took these photos in my kitchen (my favourite spot for pictures) with the jug on the table. A large south facing window is to my right and the kitchen island to my left, so the arrangement is lit from the side with soft winter light.
I am thrilled with the detail picked up by the macro lens, but also pleased that I can use this lens for distance shots as well – when considering which lens I wanted I ruled out any that were restricted to macro use only – I like to move around my flowers and take shots from different angles and distances. I never use a zoom lens anymore – I find the point of focus is always slightly blurry with a zoom. If I need to take distance shots I use my 50mm prime lens and then crop the photos – I used this technique at the outdoor opera I went to in the summer, where we were sat quite a distance from the stage.
Finally I have two photos to share that show the effect of changing the focal point on your camera. In the first I focused through the jug handle and onto the bird on the tea towel. In the second I have the same position and camera settings, but I have focused on the jug handle. The two photos are quite different.
I hope you have enjoyed this weeks In A Vase On Monday and that you will pop over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the others have made this week. From this week I will be posting my Monday vase on Instagram – #inavaseonmonday – if anyone would like to join in.
I will be back on Wednesday with the first of my monthly visits to my greenhouse – I would be delighted if any fellow greenhouse growers would like to link in with a post about their January greenhouse – I will be using the instagram hashtag ‘#inthegreenhousetoday’ to share my photos there if you would like to link up on Instagram.
Insert your profile info here, by going to Users -> Your Profile -> Biographical Info. Profile image (avatar) comes from gravatar.com. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam faucibus ornare lectus nec cursus.
You are making me very, very jealous indeed!!! I love and adore the effects with the new lens. Cannot wait to see how this progresses! Have fun, Julie.
Thank you Libby – I am very excited by this lens!!
We must be physic…I was going to use the same title, but decided to use it next week instead. Well done on the vase. Your new lens will be very exciting for you. I had one back when I was taking film photography, but haven’t found one for my Nikon. Have really been using my phone more and more. I seem to get better color accuracy. Surprising.
Thank you John – it is interesting that you get better colour with your phone – I have an iPhone 5, but find I always have to edit the photos in another app to improve the light and colour. What phone are you using?
Lovely vase again, and lovely photos! The winter light you have captured really is special.
Thank you Cathy – the winter light is so much easier to capture – harsh summer light is very difficult in my kitchen, so I have to find other places to take photographs or get up very early in the summer.
There is so much more detail to notice when we have a simple and unfussy vase, especially when you have your Christmas present to experiment with too! Some really intriguing pictures so thanks for sharing them. I did try taking some of mine today at a higher resolution but they just used up more space and didn’t look any better – hey ho!
Thank you Cathy – I always photograph my pictures on a high resolution but I think the only benefit of this is when you blow the image up it will stay clear. As you say a lower resolution takes up less storage space. The key for me has been a better understanding of the importance of good light – I am gradually learning the best windows to use at different times of the day or year – if conditions are particularly bad setting up in the greenhouse usually helps.
And reflection is an issue with glass vases – what do you do to avoid that, as shading of course reduces the light…?
I tend not to worry to much about reflections Cathy – often they add atmosphere to the photo – I do move around quite a bit though to make sure I am not in the reflection! If the light is very harsh I have an old net curtain that I use to diffuse the light coming through the window without darkening the picture – that might help to reduce reflections. Light is a funny thing – too much light can create a very harsh photo so soft diffused light is what you are after.
This post is delightful! I really enjoyed the intersections of the January focus with learning the lens and putting it all together in a post. Your experimental pictures are wonderful examples. One of my goals for 2015 is to improve my photography. This post is inspiring me in that journey.
Thank you – I have only been on my photography journey for 2 years so have a long way to go – I am glad that I am inspiring you to start your journey!
Your fragrant herb arrangement is delightful. Rosemary died out in my garden and it’s time to replace it. Enjoyed the observations you’re discovering as you use the new lens.
Thank you Susie. Rosemary can be a tricky one can’t it – particularly in a harsh winter. I have a large plant in a pot that I move to a sheltered position in the winter and that seems to survive when other plants have been beaten by cold damp conditions.
Fabulous choices for a detox and sweetly scented winter vase….wish I had enough herbs growing in my basement under lights to grab some foliage…
Thank you Donna – I am really looking forward to planning my herb garden so that I can have more plants to play with – I think I will make it in a raised bed to help with drainage and allow me to cover the plants in a harsh winter. Your basement sounds intriguing – are these cuttings that you are growing on or do you keep plants there to protect them through the winter?
Lovely to see your images with the new lens, I think you should be able to get much closer still with it and see even more details of the leaves; rosemary foliage is an adaptation to dealing with the hot sun and the leaf almost rolls around itself to offer the smallest surface area to the sun, I think yours are more open than mine because of your lower light levels.
Thank you Christina – I did not know that about rosemary – it is so interesting to learn how plants manage to cope with such harsh conditions. I was amazed to see your rosemary flowering at this time of year – I expect that you do not have the problem with getting rosemary through the winter that we experience here in the uk when the winters are harsh.
Rosemary always flowers in winter here, even in the UK, in my free draining soil it usually flowered by February.
That’s a great lens! I would love that lens, and on your camera with the ‘cropped’ sensor (like mine is) it is the equivalent of a 160mm lens on a full size sensor. Tiy will be able to get some some super dreamy images if you set it to maiximum aperture f2.8, and as you say you can focus really close to the subject to get great macro shots.
One thing to remember that for any given aperture setting the closer you get to a subject the narrower the depth of field, so you might want to play with a few effects such as putting the camera on a tripod taking a really close up macro of a subject with the Av set at 2.8, then change the Av to a smaller aperture such as f4 or f8 even f11. You should see that you get differing amounts of the image in focus.
I bought myself some extension tubes for christmas which are allowing me to focus the lens a lot closer to the subject that the lens’s natural focal length. They are a great compromise till I can save up for the 100mm macro.
I can see that not only can you play the piano better than me, but you also know far more about photography than I do – I had to read this twice and have no idea what extension tubes are – I now know where to come when I have questions!
Thank you for the tips on changing the aperture – I have just about got to grips with higher f stops equalling a smaller aperture and am looking forward to playing with this lens. I do hope that you can find a way to save up for this lens this year!
If you do have any questions about cameras then don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Lovely post, Julie! I love seeing herbs used for vases; my herbs are a bit too scrawny to use at present, but these are wonderful. I hope you don’t mind my asking a question or two about the lens as I’m trying to decide on a new one. I was planning to get something similar to this, but began worrying that it would not work well for handheld shots. I do most of my photography wandering around the garden or out hiking so a tripod isn’t really practical much of the time. If you have any advice on this, I would be very grateful!
Thank you Amy and I am so pleased that you have asked a question. I have only just got this lens, so obviously have very limited practical experience with it. Like you I mainly shoot hand held and had concerns about the size and weight of this lens.
Around the garden I am having no problems – this lens has an image stabiliser which is why I chose it over other macro lens and this seems to be very effective. It is a large lens though so perhaps not so good for hiking. I find my 50mm f1.4 is ideal when I am out and about.
Just found your blog via Cathy and her post about her greenhouse. I am hoping to try and remember to join in the greenhouse meme. Love your Monday vase, I’ve never joined in the meme as I am rubbish at picking stuff from the garden and my arranging abilities are appalling but maybe I will try again this year.
Hello & welcome Helen – thank you for leaving a comment and I do hope you manage to join in with my greenhouse post (not sure it is quite a meme yet). It would be lovely to see you making a vase on Monday as well – Cathy’s meme is about the doing – not the end result, so no skills are necessary. We have all found ourselves getting much less precious about cutting from our flower beds by joining in every Monday.
Hi Julie
I did like your foliage one, reckon I could manage something like that at the moment
How lovely with the different greens. I love the use of just foliage in this arrangement, it looks so refreshing. Funny we both used Eucalyptus this week; great minds think alike