One of the earliest spring blooming plants at my house is the hardenbergia, a vine that produces clusters of tiny purplish flowers that cover it in a magnificent display. It never ceases to amaze me that, almost without warning, this plant is suddenly carpeted with flowers, a welcome sign of the coming spring. They are tiny, no more than a quarter inch. This cluster protruded far out from the rest of the shrub, isolating it but making it more vulnerable to the breeze which made it much harder to get a clear shot. I was using my 105mm macro lens which has a very shallow depth of field. I tried focusing on different parts of the cluster to see what gave the best effect. When I focused on the unopened buds at the bottom it put the open flowers out of focus which made it look more like a mistake than intentional. I tried getting more of the cluster in focus by using a small aperture, but that brought the flowers in the background into focus, making the background too distracting. Focus stacking was not an option because I was hand holding the camera and the breeze was moving the flower cluster too much. In the end, I decided to go with one of my first shots focused on the open flowers.
