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I was amazed to find out how many different colors of Iris flowers were mixed to create some of the most beautiful hybrid Iris flowers that I have ever seen. I took this shot on 5/30/10 and posted a very detailed article on 6/2/10 about my trip to the Iris flower garden that’s located just north of Keizer, OR if anyone is interested. With all of the amazing colors of these flowers it allows a photographer hundreds of opportunities to capture the true personality that these flowers project. To get this shot I was using my Canon EOS T1i along with my Sigma 50mm Prime/Macro lens. The only filter that I was using was my UV and my Hoya 81B filter. You never want to use a CIR-PL when taking macro shots since it will create too much shadow and the shot will come out blurry. I was about 1 inch from the flower and I wasn’t using a tripod or remote switch. I don’t like using a tripod when taking most of my macro photos since it takes forever to set up and it’s not nearly as fun as getting right up close to your subject. As long as you have your settings correct and you allow enough light to avoid any blur you can master some pretty awesome shots. To ensure this I had set the camera to Program/Normal mode and made sure that the IS was on. The aperture was at F5.6, the ISO was at 200 and the white balance was at -0.7. Since the light was perfect the shutter speed came out at 1/256 second. I took the photo at about 12:05pm and I had the sun near my back so there was little to no shade to darken and blur the subject. Since I was using a prime lens I needed to concentrate and focus on one particular subject so I decided to focus in on the very bottom part of the orange tongue of the flower and the part of the dark purple that was just beneath the orange. This allowed me to focus on two separate parts of the flower without blurring the majority of the flower. I find that this is the best way to take full advantage of a Prime/Macro lens, especially when standing just cm or inches from your subject. I took well over 750 photos this day and I never seemed to run out of ways to shoot. A tripod would have really slowed me down and bored me as well. As long as you have a steady hand and can find the correct setting as well as lighting, a macro lens can really create a fun experience when photographing close subjects.