Camera goes to Kew

There’s an Orchid Festival in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens this month.  I’ve a new camera to play with and it would be dry and warm inside – what could go wrong.  Well, the outside weather this weekend wasn’t great and the queue to get inside the conservatory went all the way back to the lake by the Palm House which equated to about an hour.  I wouldn’t mind but I had specifically purchased tickets and wasn’t expecting a long queue.

But even on a cold, wet Sunday there’s still plenty to photograph to Kew and off we went to the Palm House.

The end of the queue for the Orchid Festival…no, no, no

We took 311 photos between us.  75 or so were fuzzy, blurred or just boring and these were deleted.  I can hear the calculations now “is she really going to show us more than 200 photos...?”

Just selected highlights.  My son is the photographer but came along as my camera coach.  He patiently sorted out technical glitches “it’s not working!” “what am I doing wrong?”  He gave me three learning points:

• Is the content interesting?  Would I pay to have the photograph printed?
• Pick a point of interest; not necessarily in the centre
• Pick one point of focus to create depth

With those learning points in mind, here are the highlights:

Here’s one from the boy

Pick a point of interest.  The one on the left is the boy’s and the right is mine.  He does have a point.

I found picking one point of focus the hardest thing; I wanted it all in focus!  but then wanting it all is a character trait of mine!

These are almost there, but you can see I can’t decide which part of the flower head to focus on.

I really like this shot, but the boy says it’s not in focus – maybe that says more about how I see the world when I’m not wearing my glasses…

and finally, we both agreed these were my best attempts

We found orchids in the Temperate House too