Click a photo to enlarge it. This is a selection of photos from Friday afternoon - many more will be posted in the next couple of days.
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Flower Show 2007 - learning to shoot big and small.

Today is the last day of the Flower Show at the RI Convention Center. I was at the show to take photos and to help out at the Rotary booth. Amie and my mother who is visiting from Japan accompanied me as we poked around here and there.

I shot Friday afternoon, evening, and again yesterday afternoon. The landscape designers did a fantastic job, it boggles the mind to think of all the preparation and time that had to go into the creation of each vista. The concept for the show is simple; landscape designers compete with small patches of land sculpted to their creative content while vendors sell their garden related wares in half of the convention space.

The viewing public is treated to myriad ideas for shaping their gardens and lawns while also being exposed to some very modern art. This year's theme is artistic visions, and local artists' work was included in the landscapes. For myself, as I am not an avid gardener nor close-up photographer, so I faced some challenges.

The primary challenge I anticipated was my ability to focus close to get big flower shots. In addition, when you start getting real close and using special devices like extension tubes or flash, there is a lot of math that becomes involved with computing exposure. Some people use macro-lenses and through the lens meters; probably the majority of people. I walked in using two more old-fashioned (I prefer 'traditional') methods that are tried and true. I used a handheld spot meter and some fine grain film.

I am told that flower shows are traditionally big photography events, and so I kept an eye out - curious to see how people would approach the show. Friday didn't have many photographers, mostly just people who came for the view and some snap-shooters with small digital cameras. But, Saturday people brought out the big guns and I saw many digital cameras with big lenses and lens hoods. I may have seen one film photographer (amazing), but mostly I just watched digital photogs click away.

There is a term for looking at your LCD screen a lot to check your digital shots; it's called "chimping" because of the faces you make while looking at your screen. I saw a lot of chimping - more than usual - which I think means that the lighting was challenging. (*this isn't a hit on the digital photographers - I do it when I shoot digital)

I didn't see any tripods, and for all I know they may have been banned. Because the show is held indoors, the whole scene is rather dark. On top of this, many of the landscapes portayed night scenes. This is great for drama - bad for handheld photos. I did see some very nice shots from the videographer of the show on a small sony digital camera, so I think most digital photographers probably did get some neat shots.

My setup for the day was decidedly not digital. On Friday I shot almost exclusively with the Hasselblad and 50 mm lens on a mix of Fuji Velvia and Fortia film. I was asked by the management of the show to come and take pictures, so I was trying to capture both the beautiful flowers and a bit of the atmosphere of the occasion. Knowing that these photos were to be used as stock for trades purposes, I avoided people in the shots as best I could.

I picked up some Hoya close-up filters to put on the lens if the situation required, but I found that by and large I shot without any attachment with the lens stopped down for increased depth of field. I had the advantage of having a tripod to use, but of course this can be a road hazard too, so I had to be very careful. I shot between f5.6-f11 for 1/8-1 second exposures. I rated the Fortia at ASA64 (it is officially a ASA50 film). The Velvia I shot at ASA 100.

I am going to do a more detailed review of the Fortia very soon, but here you can see some of the results. I was pleased with the film, and the Velvia didn't let me down either. If I were to walk in with either one or the other (despite the fact that it is a flower show and Fortia is designed for flower photography) I think I would choose the Velvia. But, if I were only intending to shoot flowers, I would probably carry the Fortia. The Fortia isn't more saturated as is the perception - I will explain what it is next time.

One device that I used for the first time that turned out to be very helpful was a focusing rail. The focusing rail allows for much more precise control of focus than the lens ring. It works by actually moving the camera backwards and forwards on a geared rail. The dim light made it fairly difficult to focus and between this and camera shake on the 1 second exposures my concern was with soft focus. But, in the end, depth of field was the real challenge. I kept wanting to get a shot of a flower close up and the whole vista in the background while in tack-sharp focus. This just wasn't an option sometimes as I had to move backwards to get the minimum focus length for the flower, and the shutter speed was very long for the right f-stop.

I shot a handful of rolls Friday afternoon which I ran out and got developed to see how I was doing. These photos are from that first batch. I had one complete failure of a roll - for some reason one of the film backs for the Hasselblad is allowing me to shoot with the dark-slide in. Thankfully I knew what I missed so i just went back and got these shots again and a whole lot more. Then yesterday I returned with the decidedly less impressive looking Nikon-F with 24mm lens and got a bunch more shots. Friday I looked like camera-overkill, Saturday I looked meek next to the enormous cameras people were carrying. We'll see tomorrow how the second and third round went. I think the Nikon shots could be really neat - less pressure to perform and no one paid me any mind.
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I suppose this is more narrative and not particularly technical, so next time I will write about what really worked and didn't work when I get all my results back from the lab.

During the show I got asked a half dozen times if I worked for the "Journal" which is flattering (the Providence Journal - the big RI daily), and I suppose carrying around the Hasselblad on a close-up focus rail looks impressive. If you like the photos or are one of people that asked me for photos please drop me a line - click contact under the banner at the top of the page.