The snow has retreated from the alpine areas above 1000 metres opening up our main hiking trails. This time around, we're stopping along the way to record the small views with a close-up lens. The Copper Bush has flowers that are easily overlooked as they are pretty, but not very prominent. Here we're managed to capture not only an open flower, but a bud of an flower to be as well as the fruit of a previous flower.
A 105mm micro-Nikkor lens was used for this picture. The aperture was f7.1 as we wanted to keep the background soft. Usually we use a much smaller aperture (like f22) for close-up photography. Since a large aperture was used, a little trick was needed to show all three elements in sharp detail - the fruit and the bud are actually from a second exposure of the same branch. They are pasted over top of slightly fuzzy images.
This is the first picture we've put on the web from a Nikon D1x digital camera. We are learning to use this new piece of equipment and are already impressed with how well it works. Look for more images from this camera in the near future.