THE LAST DROP

ISO 100, f/5, 1/200 second, 50mm, -1 EV

  With rain pouring down the biggest part of the morning, the option for shooting a sunrise this morning was not happening. Fortunately, though, the rain subsided before lunch and around noon I walked outside with my camera gear and worked the flowers blooming in the circle island in the front drive at work.
  TWI has a flagpole in the circle drive right in front of the front entrance. The flagpole is surrounded by a cement island that has tall, beautiful pink and yellow flowers that have been blooming for a couple of weeks now.
  The rain drenched these flowers all morning and the water was dripping off of them and that always makes for some fun photography.
  With my trusty 50mm 1.8 lens mounted I started shooting flower after flower trying to get that macro-like shot. Trying to get a little larger depth of field than I usually do with this type of shot, I set the aperture at f/5. I then opened the on-camera flash which automatically fixed the shutter speed at 1/200 of a second. I used the flash for a couple of reasons. One, to help minimize my shake with a handheld shot. Two to get some catch lights in the water droplets.
  This particular shot is cropped considerably due to the fact that it was shot with a 50mm lens and not a macro lens. Someday, I would love a macro lens but for now, the 50 will just have to do. The only other special processing I performed was using OnOne Software's Dreamland effect from Perfect Effects 3 Free. My wife and I both though it added a tremendous effect on the image with the soft focus and cutting out some of the detail and drawing more attention to the water droplets.