Peony Glowing, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

For me, photography is about color and light. The two come together in flowers that are backlit by the sun, as in these two that I took today. (See my Luminous Lily for an example from a couple of weeks ago.)

The peony above is a tripod-mounted macro using the late afternoon sun to backlight the photo, a spot light to add accent, and a fill-flash bounced in front.

I took the photo below early this morning hand-holding my 200mm macro lens, with the ISO boosted to 1,000 so that hand-holding was possible. (The default ISO on this camera is 100.)

I had set the High ISO filter setting on my Nikon D200. I think this compensates remarkably well for the high ISO. You almost wouldn’t know that I’d gained an order of magnititude in possible shutter speed/aperture combinations—with very little trade-off in terms of extra digital noise (the modern comparable to more grain in faster film).

View this photograph larger.