Our Floral Challenge Winner: Beauty Close to Home

[alpha-jessica-a]

Derek Patteson, also known as @degrees.kaptured on social media, is a photographer based in the countryside of West Texas. Due to his location, he tends to focus his photography on nature, animals, and small town life. He is currently an amateur photographer, fitting in his passion alongside his full time job. His goal is to one day become a professional photographer. Derek shared this stunning shot in our recent floral Challenge and we immediately wanted to learn more about the story behind the image! Keep reading to hear Derek’s perspective. 

The Dew Rose photo was taken on our small homestead. It is a rose bush that my wife has in her garden. It had rained that night. After waking up, I made some coffee, grabbed my camera and headed outside to see what I could capture. Most things were still covered with dew from the rain. I took multiple pictures of different flowers, plants, and insects that morning. But that rose picture is definitely the stand out photo of them all.  

I took the photo with my at the time brand new Sony Alpha 7IV. I upgraded from a Sony A6000 and I chose the Sony Alpha 7IV because I didn't feel I needed the 61 megapixels of the Sony Alpha 7RIV  and 33 megapixels is a good middle ground to me. I had a 30mm lens paired with my camera.  I selected a lens with a short focusing distance and an aperture that would give me the creamy background I love.  

This shot was not planned, I didn't spray the rose to make it more "dewy", I went out not expecting much but ended up getting a great photo of a rose.  Although the lens is a 30mm I was in crop mode so it was a 45mm equivalent. I was at f/3.2 because I wanted to get all the petals and water droplets in focus while still having that nicely blurred background. My shutter was at 1/250s and my ISO was at 400.  

I used Adobe Lightroom mobile to edit the photo to post to my Instagram. I started with a preset called Yo That's Pretty Moody from North Borders and tweaked the exposure, contrast, and colors to get my final result. You can see a short video of the process below.
 

 
Thanks so much Derek for getting involved in one of our photo challenges.

Make sure to check out our other current photo challenges and share your work!

[degrees.kaptured]

Great! Thanks again for the opportunity. And so happy you liked my photo.