Irises Wild

When I first started photographing irises, I didn't take shots like this:

or this:

and certainly not this:

Rather, I started with conventional 'portrait' shots, like this:

That's only natural. You shoot what you (can) see, and I'd seen hundreds of shots like that, or like this:

It took awhile to evolve toward more imaginative posings. And that too was inevitable. One gets bored with the same old same old. Accidents happen. And one tries to repeat the happier accidents.

But those first three shots also required a minor technical realization: An autofocus camera focuses itself. That's what "autofocus" means. And that means that the photographer doesn't have to been looking through the view-finder to get the shot in focus. The camera can do it, all by itself. That's what made those first three shots possible, and this one as well:

I'd lower the camera to waist level or lower, point it up, depress the shutter button part way, listen for the 'click' indicating that the camera's got focus, and CLICK! take the shot. Of course, since I wasn't looking directly at the scene the camera is shooting, I didn't know exactly what I'd get. To some extent, of course, that's always the case, even when you're looking and framing as carefully as you can. But now the level of uncertainty is much higher. So many more shots are unusable. Even as you discover compositions you might not otherwise have sought out:

And occasionally you get the shot you intended to get:

Occasionally.