Helianthus "Lemon Queen"

Out of my garden. Hand-held macro of the compelling perennial sunflower

"Lemon Queen". This crop closely shows the structure of the flower

(German: "Zungenblueten" and "Roehrenblueten").

Outstanding close up here and of very fine exposure and details, the original colors adds a great impact to the composition of this very pleasant image.

Thank you for sharing it and wishing you all of the best.

I would have preferred a greater degree of sharpness which would be possible with a tripod. The aperture is also very crucial in getting the sharp focus.  Since macros always suffer from shallow DOF because of the nature of physics one has to resort to F16 or F22 which slows down the shutter speed.

A tripod is a must when macro work is being done.  Macro photography takes a lot of patience and mastering of technique. But it is always a lot of fun.

Yes, Usha, of course you are right and I know the rules. In fact this shot was taken with f5.6 and 1/500 sec at ISO 200. 

My tripod is not always close at hand. The greater problem is, there rarely is a day without wind where I live, even in summer, and this picture was taken in autumn. Of course I could fix the branch or pick it and bring it inside, but I like natural scenes. I also find the play with unsharpness fascinating like you did here: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=12018231

I wouldn't recommend small apertures like f/22 anyway because of diffraction. 

The uploaded picture is an about 30 % crop of a picture whose sharpness I find not perfect but acceptable after all.

Thank you for your comment.