Dewdrop and the Land of Bokeh

[best appreciated at full size against black]

What do you get when you focus a 100mm macro lens at a tiny droplet of water on a blade of grass and set your aperature to 5.0? You get enough depth of field for a crisp water pearl and you also get CRAZY BOKEH! I have to thank my husband, Steve, for showing me by example, why it's a good idea to take a bunch of pictures of each subject using a variety of aperatures. When you take the time to do this, you get many choices in regards to focus and bokeh. In regards to focus, sometimes your subject isn't quite pin-sharp at, say 2.8, but at 5.0, the depth has increased enough to include the sweet spot you wanted. For this picture, the other part of this equation was most important to me, since I was able to keep that droplet in focus with all my aperature choices (not always the case!!). Focus is one part, bokeh is the other. With lots of choices, you can decide what amount of blur looks the best. For me, the version at 2.8 was too soft and undefined, and so was 3.2. 4.0 was getting there, but 5.0 was just right! (I also had one at 8.0 just to see how that looked, but I knew it wouldn't work, and as expected, it was too clear and distracting.) I like this version because you can just pick out blades of grass in the background, with one up front that comes to near focus. Finally, the blade of grass with the droplet totally blurs out at either end and I think there's something very cool about that...what do you think?! :)

I've uploaded one other picture today and I hope you'll visit it too!

Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :)

NOTE! I have finally updated my profile and I hope you'll take a look to find out a little more about me and how important all of you are to my experience here on Flickr!
www.flickr.com/people/sfhipchick/

This image was taken in February, 2012.