Pine tree needles

Pine tree needles photographed from the top in the forest

This picture was shot on the Holterberg in the east part of The Netherlands (see map). I really like to go for an early walk and see the forest wake-up. It is such a tranquil time of the day. No other people, winds are mostly lower during the morning, less sound everywhere and those droplets of water… wow!

That morning me and my wife went for such a nice morning photography walk. My wife is really into macro photography and is very good in that (please see her website here). As I do not own a fancy macro lens, I sometimes use the Kenko extension tubes to do some macro photography. Disappointably, that morning I did not have those with me.

So I looked at my wife when I saw this great droplets of water on some pine tree needles and I asked her to lend me her camera 🙂 She did 🙂
With her camera I leaned over to these pinetree needles and focussed on the middle part. I thought that I focussed on the middle part at least. Well it turned out that I probably moved while taking the shot. The middle part is just out of focus. And you know what? First I did mind, but later on, I grew fond of it. When you look at the shot you naturally look to the middle part. However, this middle part was not the reason for shooting it. I was because of the tiny water droplets. And with the middle part out of focus, you naturally look more at those waterdroplets!

Like I said, I used the camera of my wife (Canon EOS 1000D) without any fancy other equipment, no tripod or anything. I was just shot from the hands. The camera was on aperture priority; at that moment I was not yet using manual settings. With an ISO and an F-number of 2.8 to really get that depth of field, the camera chose an exposure time of 1/125th of a second. The lens itself has a focal length of 60 mm.

In post I did not do anything other than adding the watermark, boosting the shadows a bit and lowering the highlights a bit. So, the picture was made on the spot with an unfamiliar camera for me, without any fancy settings and without any post processing. That made this shot a great impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location