I spent an hour in my garden. Spring has officially begun, and it’s starting to show. Not in a big abundant way, but still. I didn’t have much time, and there was no sun, but I wanted to photograph something, so I decided to try the garden. The pear tree seemed a good place to start because of the lovely small flowers that will soon be blossom.

But it was hard. I am not going to lie, it was a tough ride. I started out with my Jupiter 50mm lens. But I couldn’t get the image I wanted, so I decided to go inside and change the Jupiter for the Tele-Elmarit. I also had some trouble with backlight, as I needed  to look up to focus on the flowers, but the sky was too clear to give me a good background. So I took a ladder out as well. Can’t say I didn’t try… 🙂

I had a better view from the ladder, but it only made me feel a little bit better. You see, once on a ladder, it is difficult to try different viewpoints, so I was bit limited there. Add to that some very soft spots in the ground, leading to a wobbly ladder, and you can imagine my struggles…

I did get some nice shots with the Elmarit, but I needed a closer focus. The minimal focus distance for the Elmarit is one meter, and that is just not practical standing between branches of a tree. So the next step was to go inside and change my beloved Leica M for my man’s Fuji X-E1. He has a very nice high speed Canon lens, which could give me even better bokeh, and it has a minimal focus distance of about 50 cm. So I gave that a try…

I think by now you will understand that I was pretty far out of my comfort zone… Instead of wandering in a field or woodland, looking for some nice shots, I am standing on a wobbly ladder on a grey day with a camera in my hand that I am not really familiar with. Anything for a decent picture, right?

Back to the roses… Well, no roses yet, but some really fresh leaves are emerging, announcing that there will be roses soon. That lead to the yin yang photo above, and the colourful photo on top of this post. All and all, I think I am satisfied with the outcome. The photos needed more post processing than I am used to, but framing is difficult on a ladder, so you have to that afterwards.

But the good news is, soon there will be roses, as spring has officially begun. And then there will be sun and flowers and everything will be easy and I’ll be dancing through the fields…

Thanks for reading!