Image Focus

Although the image is of a Peruvian Scilla flower, I photographed it closer to my home in the historic park on the ancient lava slopes of Mount Etna: the "Paternò del Toscano." The beautiful park and gardens are a unicum in the European floral panorama because they contain many species of very rare plants from almost every corner of the world.

I took the image with my Sony Alpha 7 IV and the FE 50mm f/2.5 G lens. I added some extension tubes to effectively turn the lens into a macro lens and get as close as possible to the tiny flower. The general part of the flower that is in focus is just a few centimetres from the front of the lens.

The closeness of the image, the shallow depth of field, and the lens blur almost give the image a three-dimensional effect, which is the quality that I had in mind when I took the shot.

I love the perspective that the 50mm focal length gives—it isn’t exaggerated like shorter wide-angle lenses may do. As I often travel many kilometres in the mountains, with a backpack already very heavy with all the necessities, the 50mm f/2.5 G is a must-have lens - perfect for its size, weight, close focus, and field of view for landscape images.

The image of the Scilla flower is part of a wider project commissioned by the park's owners to create a book that illustrates the park’s unique characteristics. The guiding idea was to tell a story of the place through the various qualities and colours that flowers express during the different seasons of the year.

The plant was situated in an awkward position in the park for me to take the shot; it was impossible for me to use a tripod. I relied upon the SteadyShot stabilisation of the Sony Alpha 7 IV to shoot the image handheld; Usually I prefer to compose my images looking through the viewfinder, but in this case, given the technical difficulty of it being a macro shot, and the terrain I was working on, I used the Live View screen. Using the screen and the Focus Magnifier feature allows you to shoot macro shots like this with precision.

One of the exciting features of the Sony Alpha 7 series is that, thanks to the full-frame FE mount, they allow me a lot of flexibility; I can mount many different accessories of different ages and from various manufacturers to the camera, which offers me extraordinary creative freedom as a photographer.

What I like about the image is the fleshiness of the flower; it has a joyful and bright colour. It is also fascinating that because of the scale it feels like we can enter every tiny detail of the flower's structure.

I hope that those who see this photograph can be intrigued and enjoy the beauty of nature, as it was for me.