Proof that spring is here

It must be ! We started gardening... well when I say gardening, I mean mowing the lawn. As much as I'd like to have gone out today and enjoy the sun, this year we are going to try desperately hard to keep the garden in shape. If we don't, I think our neighbours will apply to have us evicted ;) So, as with most things that move these days, I decided to strap the camera to the mower for a shot :) A bit of fun really...

A few problems getting the shot, though not at all straightforward. Things I had to consider follow,

I was going to use my 40D but as it was too heavy, I used the G9, which had a limiting wide angle so it was difficult to get a good composition as the magic arm wasn't long enough.

Then I found the lawn to be way too bumpy so camera shake (the mower skews and flexes all over the place, unlike a fairly rigid car) was a real issue. I had to move the mower so slowly to limit shake, but that compromised the background motion blur which I'd preferred to be longer.

I also wanted grass to be flying out the back, which meant added vibration because of the motor.

I thought using a off camera flash would be good to then freeze the grass and sharpen the mower, and allow me to darken the background. However, I couldn't figure out how to hold the flash in position. In hindsight, I could have put it on a tripod, but at the time I didn't think of that so didn't use a flash.

The grass cuttings were just put in the mower ready to be 'ejected' when the mower was switched on. Cutting real grass would have been much more difficult and I would have had to push the mower further.

The final shot isn't as sharp as I'd like, but has a sense of lots going on and I love the grass cuttings shooting out the back.