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For my second weekly assignment I took a trip to Descanso Gardens.  I figured I would take a lot of close up pictures of flowers so I decided to shoot using my 50mm f/1.8 lens to allow for the best control of depth of field. I decided I would focus on getting some good shots of isolated subjects with non-distracting backgrounds. I went during the afternoon so the lighting started pretty harsh but got better as the day went on.

I didn't start these weekly assignments to do a "moral of the story" every time I go out shooting but there was another lesson learned on this trip. For the first 20 shots I had the aperture set around 2.0 with a very small distance between the subject and the camera. This created an extremely shallow depth of field. So shallow in fact that very little of the flower would be sharp and most of it would be blurry. It was hard to notice on the little LCD screen on the back of the camera so it went unnoticed for awhile, but was ultimately corrected.

Ultimately, the trip was very enjoyable and I got some good shots. A couple of my favorites are below with a some more in the weekly assignments gallery.