Dandelion Challenge

Besides all the critters at Duck Creek, I was VERY happy to find a field of dandelions! I've been wanting to shoot some since Kim posted her dandelion pic more than a year ago on her blog. She said it was harder than she thought and she wasn't kidding!!! I hope she won't mind me posting her pic here, since it was my inspiration. You would not believe how many dandelion shots I took and I STILL never achieved quite the same clarity she did with hers. Kudos to Kim!!!! GREAT SHOT!
There was an elementary school across from the creek and I'm sure the children wondered why the old lady was laying down in the grass with her camera! At any rate, here's what I was thinking. I knew I wanted to isolate with an f/5.6 and was assuming I would want to zoom in as far as possible. So that first day, my focal length was 200mm for all attempts. I felt pretty sure I had some good pics, but when I saw them on the computer was frustrated! Part of each dandelion was sharply in focus, but in every shot there was another part that was not. Grrrrr! I thought about that all day and finally realized I could download Kim's pic, import it into my editing software and read her settings. Ahhh.....Kim's f stop was the same as mine, but her focal length was only 50 mm. I'm guessing that the further you zoom in, the more specific the point of focus becomes....and since dandelions are spherical, the center will be in focus but the edges, which are farther away from the lens, will not. (Is that right, Kim?)

SO.....I headed back to Duck Creek a second time, mainly to try again on those pesky dandelions! I experimented with 4 different focal lengths and found that the shorter length really did give greater overall focus. I still didn't quite match Kim's crispness, but I'm learning. This is my sharpest shot....I like the seeds on the bottom and the still yellow dandelion in the background.
This next shot isn't quite as sharp, but I'm including it because I like the way the colors turned out. This one happened to be hanging out over the creek. (Picture me lying face down, balanced over a big rock, hoping not to fall in the creek with my camera!)...I love the watery background, the hairy stem, and those 2 loose seeds. It was a perfect sphere when I started shooting, then wind stirred up those seeds. Much more interesting! I've decided that dandelions are like snowflakes....each one unique in it's own way.
(Judy, I tried reducing the file size on my pics today since you've had trouble getting them to load sometimes. Let me know if this works better. And thanks for taking time to read!)