Puddle Reflections
My uncle was perplexed the other night when he saw me kneel down in the parking lot of a restaurant next to a large mud puddle. He was even more flabbergasted when I pulled out my camera and pointed it directly at the puddle. But I wasn’t taking a photo of the mud, of course, but of the reflection! Yep, there’s more than one reason to celebrate the sun poking out from behind the rain clouds. The sun’s reflection on small puddles of water can do wonders with a certain kind of bokeh.
First, start with a puddle like this:
Yep, nothing fancy about this puddle at all. In fact, let’s look a little closer:
This obviously isn’t a deep puddle, so I’m going to try to get as close as I can to minimize all those little twigs sticking out. I’m shooting with the D-FA 100mm macro, so luckily I don’t have to get too close, but distance will help determine how the effect comes out. Minimum focusing distance with this lens is about 8″, but I’m going to try to stay at least 12″ to maximize the pretty bokeh.Aperture is important for this shot as well. Let’s try f/2.8 to see how the effect looks:
Whoa, a little wacky. Cool, but wacky.Maybe a shot at f/5.6?
Ah, yes, now we’re getting there! We’re going to stop the lens down a bit more, to f/8 and see what we come up with:
THIS was what I was going for. Now I just shift position a bit, make sure the sun isn’t behind a cloud, and shoot away!
