During my Holland workshop, each of the students must buy a bouquet of tulips at the flower market on Singelstraat in Amsterdam and create as many images as they can within a 60-minute period. There are no restrictions on how they use the tulips in the shot, whether as a still life, placed somewhere in the overall composition of a given scene, as a “prop” in a portrait, and so on. Following one such 60-minute period, the students and I met up on a street corner near Dam Square, where each of the students gave away their bouquet to a passerby. I was the only one who still had my bouquets because I wanted to share an idea with the group now that the contest was over. “Did anyone think of placing the tulips on the back of a bike?” Not surprisingly, no one had. So off we went in search of a bike-and-tulip shot and we didn’t have to travel far, since Amsterdam is overrun with bikes (see first image). In the second image, taken with my 70–300mm telephoto lens at 240mm, the lens’s narrow angle of view allowed me to isolate the two bikes. It was a typically overcast day in Amsterdam, and the exposure was easily shot in Aperture Priority mode at the “who cares” aperture of f/11.

For the final image, I waited a few minutes for a tourist boat to pass behind, adding some welcome tension to the overall composition. I stopped the lens down to f/22 and recorded a correct exposure of 1/15 sec. You can decide for yourself, but my opinion is that this final image, with the blurred background of tourists, is far more appealing. The added tension makes all the difference. Remember: work it, work it, work it!

First and second image: Nikon D3X with Nikkor 70–300mm lens, f/11 for 1/60 sec., ISO 200; Bottom image: Nikon D3X with Nikkor 70–300mm lens, f/22 for 1/15 sec., ISO 200