Lilac

I took this shot (and about a dozen others) when I got home from work this afternoon - hand held, because I decided that it was too awkward to get a tripod into the heavily-planted bed where the lilac lives. It was a bit of a challenge, due to the angle at which I was leaning, and to gusty winds blowing the shrub around.

I looked at the shots in Lightroom, deleted all but two of them, and decided that although I liked this, it was just a little soft. So I got the tripod out and hacked through the undergrowth to set it up by the lilac.

I took another eight shots - but by this time the wind was much stronger, and even though the camera was stable the lilac wasn't. And because of the thick cloud, the light was going. And it was raining.

I uploaded the shots, deleted all of them, took another look at this with my head on one side and my eyes narrowed, sharpened it up a bit more, looked at it again, and then went down and broke a flower panicle off the lilac and brought it indoors.

"Do I really want to get the lights out at this time on a Friday night? Ugh - no, I don't. I'll just shoot it on the kitchen table: the LED downlighters will be strong enough, and I can correct the colour afterwards."

Three hours later I finally managed to get the colour approximately right on my four indoor shots, just as full-blown Lightroom Psychosis was setting in. I looked through all six photos, decided that it couldn't possibly be the case that I still liked this one best, gave up and went to bed.

This morning I asked CH to look through them; he pronounced the kitchen table ones to be weird, and said if it were up to him he'd post this.

So. The moral of this story, my darlings, is that "slightly soft" is sometimes as good as you're likely to get, and if you simply accept that and post your slightly soft blip at 5pm, you can avoid spending the whole of a Friday evening squinting at a computer monitor and going to bed in a temper.

This was shot with the 85mm lens and a 13mm extension tube, and therefore qualifies for Walking Wombat's challenge May Macro Mayhem.  It's also a flower panicle, which qualifies it for BikerBear's challenge Flower Friday. Please don't anyone bother telling me that it's blossom, and blossom isn't the same thing as flower.

I'm also indebted to lynnfot for loaning me her alternative acronym to SOOC; this shot is a SAIL.

The weird ones are here, if you care.