Last weekend I came across these beautiful peonies and could not resist photographing them. The image below was taken with a Nikon D3100 with a 40 mm micro lens, an aperture of f3.8 for 1/2000s, and ISO 100. The camera was not tripod mounted.

I got down on the ground to shoot the photo below, but I realize now that the photo would have been much improved if I used a tripod. This was taken with the 40 mm micro lens, an aperture of f3 for 1/1000s, and ISO 100.

For this photo, I used the 18-55 mm lens at 82 mm, an aperture of f5.6 for 1/320s, hand held, no flash.