Falling leaves

Remember the tulips from Valentine's Day? Fairly short shelf life! They looked absolutely glorious for three ar four days as they opened up, but fairly quickly after that the stems were drooping and the petals started to fall. Then on Sunday, we had quite windy weather, and before I knew it, the tulips were completely nude. As I picked up fallen petal number 1001, I wondered whether or not there could be a use for them.

I struck on the idea of trying to photograph them falling like leaves in autumn. I wish I hadn't! The idea was far more fruitful than the outcome, but in an effort to show that not all ideas can be transposed into artistic genius, my final image is shown above.

What went wrong? Well, nearly everything, really. The camera was set on a tripod, and one off-camera flash was used at 90 degrees to the lens axis. I wanted to fire the shutter as the petals passed the lens, hoping to capture a dreamy image of leaves floating lazily towards the ground. But the petals actually fell like stones! Timing the exposure to fire while leaves were in the frame was far from easy. I have many exposures with a petal count of zero; several where there is one solitary petal of the thirty or so I dropped; some with two or three petals; and only two with the multiple petals I had envisaged.

I wonder how many blocks of marble Michelangelo destroyed before he finished his "David"?

EXIF: Nikon D200; Nikkor 17-55 mm DX; ISO 200; 1/20 sec; f22.

TFF