Water Lily

There are many types of water lily and one that is in this article is the ‘unwanted’ lilies. You can find them growing in the wild but save your horses for a trip to the mountains and caves, for that trip to some bird sanctuary you’ve been itching to go, and head instead to the drains of Donggongon in Penampang. Drain sounds a little less than interesting place to shoot flowers, no? Think about the kind of affluent that the drain might be carrying, the little produce of the less-than-responsible people doing their business there. You know, those squatters, perhaps.

So, getting your feet in the ‘fertile’ drain may not be your first option. Forget about setting up a tripod for a macro and close-up shot down there. Go for hand-held method, crank up the ISO and dial the shutter speed to 1/300s to 1/500s to beat the camera shake. Shoot when Mr Sun is not shining directly on the flowers; a good day would be during cloudy morning. This will give you generally more saturated colours – according to some literature I read somewhere. But that make sense, because the camera metering system will be more at ease as the lighting is less tricky.

Okay, I said no tripod. If you are serious about getting the best result, just ignore what I’ve just said and get yourself half soaked in water. Believe me, you’ll get better images than the samples you see here; miles better!

Don’t worry if you are a beginner – coz I’m a beginner myself. And I keep shooting no matter what.

It all start with a banana-heart shaped bud

The green petals slowly turn to its eventual colour, pink.

Lens fully extended to 200mm.

There’s no way you can tidy up your background if you don’t get your feet into the water.

Cropped

Like us, the lily will grow old and die eventually. New buds will shoot up and entertain the spectator with new blooms.

Other alternative is to take a walk in the park in Tanjung Aru and get to shoot a different species of lily. Such as these:

Now where’s the bigger version of this shot. I can’t be kidding with this tiny thumb-size pic, can I?

Ahaa! Sea of lilies. This was more than a year ago when I’ve just bought my D90 and still struggling to fiddle with the cam features.

Happy Shooting...!!!