"The picture was taken in February 2005 at the
Annual Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show.
I went to the show to experiment. I was trying to find
my own way of looking at flowers, something that would
bring up not just shapes and colors, but also their often
distinct personalities. A show like that creates obvious
opportunities (thousands of objects to choose from), but
also challenges: tripods are not allowed, the lighting
conditions vary greatly, and the place is usually very
crowded. That all makes a pretty uncontrollable environment.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons why I put a 100 mm
macro lense on my Canon Digital Rebel and started shooting
closeups; I could be sure that I was fully in control
of a space of less that a square inch.
Then I realized that through my macro lense I could see
the entirely new world to which I had not paid enough
attention before. That is the new insight you find when
you look closely at things you thought you knew well.
The tulip in the picture was nicely lit from above by
a floodlight but I also had to use a flash to be able
to increase my depth of field and reduce the contrast.
The extra light also allowed me to keep my shutter speed
at 1/125s with F 25.00, so I could hand-hold my camera."
