Lu Zhang, 44, saw our May 2010 Photo Challenge to use a flash outdoors in daylight, he’d already been using a Phoenix Smart Flash for about eight months. A photographer of three years, he thought, “I can do this.” Zhang, a software engineer based in Kanata, Ontario, walks to work each day on a trail alongside Beaver Pond. “I carry my camera with me,” he says, “and look for interesting things to shoot.” One morning this May, he spotted this dandelion. “I wanted to shoot it very close up, using the smallest aperture possible for maximum depth of field,” he explains. “Natural light wouldn’t have been enough.” Behind it he placed a piece of black tissue that he keeps in his camera bag to isolate small subjects. He spotmetered and set ISO to 320 for the required 1/200-sec flash sync speed and to control motion blur.—Lori Fredrickson. dandelion close upSHARE
