How and Why

Having been to the Appleby Horse fair on two previous occasions I returned in 2007 to seek out images that were different from those I'd taken in the past. In an attempt to find some different angles to shoot from I decided to get down among the flowers on this roadside verge and make them the main subject with the horses providing background interest.

This afternoon was quite windy and the flower heads were moving a lot in the wind. I had to choose the shutter speed and aperture combination carefully. I needed a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the flower head motion but a small aperture to allow the background elements to be sharp enough to remain recognisable. I zoomed out to 17 mm to maximize the depth of field of the lens and then had to wait in position for cars to clear the frame and allow me a composition that included just horses.

I manually focussed to hold the front-most flower head in focus and relied on the depth of field to keep it sharp despite it swaying back and forth in the breeze. I experimented with the plane of focus - with some pictures I focussed on the horses on the road and allowed the flower-heads to fall out of focus - on reviewing the images I like this combination better.

The viewpoint that I took this image from was quite high up a steep roadside verge and it was very difficult to get low enough for this angle and maintain a steady hand-holding position.

In post processing I've purposely clipped the highlights with at levels adjustment to give additional vibrance to the white petals. I've also cropped out a couple of distracting figures to the right of the frame to simplify the composition. Although the 17mm angle of view was ideal for maximizing depth of field - the trade off was a field of view wider than necessary for the composition I was after so cropping the image was the ideal compromise.

Background

The annual Appleby Horse Fair 2007. On this visit to the Horse Fair I'd stayed at home all morning waiting for my new 70-200 VR lens to arrive. By midday I realised that the courier had let me down and it wasn't going to arrive. I set off to Appleby regardless, lamenting the fact that I'd missed half of the day.

When I arrived I experimented far more creatively than I would have done with the lenses that I had with me. I'm sure that if I'd received the 70-200 I'd have concentrated on trying it out rather than genuinely seeking out the best lens option for the opportunities I was photographing in. Thankfully (and somewhat ironically) this was an instance when not having the lens I thought I wanted resulted in far more successful images !