I know that many out there want to improve their photography in one aspect. Flower photography. With gardening as popular as it is this shouldn’t be a surprise. Flower photography while looking like one of the simplest forms of photography can quickly become one of the most difficult. Here are a few tips for you. (Keeping in mind that basic good photography skills are always used.)
1. Soft diffuse light. Today it’s very overcast outside, and if there were any flowers in bloom today would be the perfect day for capturing some great images. Soft diffuse light enhances color saturation, so if you wondered how or why pro photographers flower images seem so deep in color this is one of the reasons why. (There are exceptions to this rule. I do some flower photography is bright or dappled sunlight but I’m usually trying to get an effect of light passing through the petals.)
2. Slow film speed. 200 speed or less. The slower speed films have greater detail and for flowers you’re going to need to get close anyway and you want the nice sharp detail of a slower speed of film. I use 100 speed for my flower photography.
3. Tripod. Use one for this type of photography. Set up your shot, get everything in sharp focus, and then shoot. A tripod will keep your camera from moving on you and allow you to get the sharp detail you will need.
4. Look for great colors, a flower in full bloom next to a bud, and don’t shoot on windy days. Keep contrast and color in mind at all times and try different compositions each time you take a shot.
Flower photography can be a lot of fun especially if the flowers are your own.
If you have some specific questions please visit my Photography and Design Forum at: http://kellypaalphotography.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/index.php and post your question there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright 2005 Kelly Paal
Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. She owns her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.
The textbook definition of “administrative distance” is simple enough: “the measurement of a protocol’s believability”. It’s not enough to know the definition, however you’ve got to know when AD comes into the picture and when it does not.
When a packet needs to be routed, the router looks in its routing table for the next-hop IP address the packet should take to get to the destination. There may be more than one matching path, in which case the router will look for the “longest match”. The route that has the longest match – the route with the most bits in the mask set to “1″ – will be the route that is used.
Consider the following three routes from a fictional Cisco router:
I 172.17.0.0 /24 via 172.1.1.1
O 172.17.0.0 /25 via 173.1.1.1
R 172.17.0.0 /26 via 174.1.1.1
This router has three possible next-hop IP addresses that it can send packets destined for the network 172.17.0.0. The masks are of different lengths, meaning that the route with the longest match (again, the route with the most bits set to “1″) will be used. In this example, the RIP route will be used, since it has the longest match with a mask of /26. The administrative distances do not matter.
AD does matter when the masks are the same length, as shown here:
I 172.17.0.0 /24 via 172.1.1.1
O 172.17.0.0 /24 via 173.1.1.1
R 172.17.0.0 /24 via 174.1.1.1
The longest match rule always precedes the use of AD, but here there is a three-way tie regarding the masks. They’re all /24 (or 255.255.255.0 in dotted decimal). AD will be used to break this tie.
As mentioned, AD is a measurement of a protocol’s believability. It is important to keep in mind that the lowest AD will be preferred. And while the routing table will show you the ADs of the respective protocols, it’s a very good idea to know these ADs before taking the CCNA or CCNP:
Connected route: 0
Static Route: 1
EIGRP Summary: 5
External BGP: 20
EIGRP (Internal): 90
IGRP: 100
OSPF: 110
ISIS : 115
RIP: 120
EIGRP (External) : 170
Unknown: 255 (A router will not believe a source with an AD of 255, and such routes will not be placed into the routing table.)
The three protocols we looked at in the comparison were RIP, IGRP, and OSPF. While your first instinct may be that the OSPF route would be the most believable, IGRP actually has a lower AD than the other two and would be the route installed in the routing table.
Since IGRP does not support variable-length subnet masking and OSPF does, you may never see this scenario outside of an exam question. But if you do see it in the exam room or in a production network, you’ll understand how an IGRP route could be preferred over an OSPF route.
Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage (www.thebryantadvantage.com), home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages. Video courses and training, binary and subnetting help, and corporate training are also available.
For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” or “How To Pass The CCNP”, send a request to chris@thebryantadvantage.com today !
