Posts in Category: flowers
5/23/2010
Lady Slipper Lineup
Happy Sunday.
Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge is the only place I have ever seen Lady Slippers growing in groups. There are two clusters there which have been spectacular the past two springs. I went out late afternoon to catch the light on these. The flip out LCD on the Canon makes these low shots easy.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. F2.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the hot pink highlights. A touch of Fill Light to compensate for Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Rachel Carson NWR Seasons.
By the time I got to the second cluster, the direct sun was no longer on them, but the color is so vibrant that it hardly matters. 🙂 Settings and processing just about identical, with the exception that this shot is at ISO 400 (and pretty good at that!) and I used Auto White Balance in Lightroom to warm the open-shade tones.
5/20/2010
Found Still Life
Another shot grabbed in passing during the rush of the World Series of Birding. Grabbed is, of course, an misnomer. There is a state you get too in your photography where a lot can happen in the second it takes to frame and shoot. A whole set of complex decisions are compressed so tightly that it feels like instinct or reflex. See photo, shoot photo. Move on. It can happen in a second, and in the middle of doing something else altogether…like documenting the World Series of Birding. 🙂
I liked the big leaves. I liked the yellow flowers. Then I saw them against the fallen log with the vines. I saw what the light was doing. I stepped off the side of the camp road, zoomed in a bit for framing, and shot.
Canon SX20IS at 112mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/13th @ ISO 200. Landscape program.
In Lighroom, a touch of Fill Light and Blackpoint just right. Added Clarity and a very small amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
5/14 – 5/15/2010
I will be doing a chase car for Team Zeiss at the World Series of Birding, beginning at midnight tonight and going trough midnight on Saturday, so…this post will most likely have to cover two days. (You can follow my adventures, and the adventures of Team Zeiss, on Twitter, @singraham or @zeissbirding_us, or see both twitters and blog posts at zeisssports.wordpress.com.)
That said, these are Pink Lady Slipper Orchids from Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, ME, taken last Sunday. The top shots are from a sunny patch facing the river, right at the edge of the forest, which bloomed early…most of the flowers at Rachel Carson looked like the bottom shot last Sunday. I was there early, and the low sun was in and out behind clouds, so the light on the full blooms is quite different than the light on the unopened buds.
All were taken with the Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. Exposure varied with the light but was mostly at ISO 80 and ISO 125. The top three at F2.8, and the bottom one at f5.
For the sunny shots, a bit of Recovery in Lightroom. A touch of Fill Light, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and Vibrance, Sharpen landscape preset. For the bottom shot, similar but, clearly, different amounts, plus cropping for composition.
5/13/2010
Painted Trillium
These spring beauties bloom only briefly, around the same time as Lady Slipper Orchid, and in the same locations. I could find only two at Rachel Carson NWR last Sunday, but it might be a bit early.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm and Super-macro. F2.8 @ 1/60th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, a touch of Recovery for the petals, not much Fill Light, Blackpoint right slightly, added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped slightly for composition.
5/9/2010
Bluets for Mother’s Day
Happy Sunday and Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms, especially to my lovely wife, Carol.
The Azure Bluet is a tiny flower of lawns and meadows, found all through the Eastern US, growing in acidic soils. This spring they are all over our shady lawn, and I am seeing pale blue patches in most of the yards on our street. We are talking tiny here. The flowers themselves are less than half an inch wide and, here in New England, they grow no more than 2 inches tall (there is a taller variety in the South). That makes them close to twice life size in this image, as displayed on my monitor.
This is another shot using the Canon SX20IS’s flip out LCD. Essentially I got down for an eye to eye view with the bluets. I am within 1/4 inch of the center flower. Open shade made it possible to angle to place the wood fragment for pleasing composition. To my eye it anchors the composition, giving a bit more coherence to an otherwise random pattern of flowers. Later, in Lightroom, I cropped from the bottom to improve the composition and to eliminate some more out of focus flowers.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm and Super-macro. F2.8 @ 1/1250 @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.
Besides the cropping, I used a touch of Recovery and a bit of Fill Light in Lightroom. Added Clarity and not much Vibrance at all. Sharpen landscape preset.
From The Yard, Kennebunk ME.
And, for contrast, a more conventional view.
5/5/2010
Wild Strawberry
I still have several images from St Augustine I want to share, and I will get to them I am sure, but I want to give you a break from birds 🙂 . Suddenly the yard, and every vacant patch of waste ground, is covered with Wild Strawberry blooms. Such promise. Unfortunately I never see berries on these plants. I think something eats them long before they ripen. This plant is in our yard and is presented here 1/3 again life-sized (at least on my 1366×768 screen). The camera was sitting on the ground and I was using the flip out LCD for composition. The flower was actually inside the lens hood. 🙂 The late overcast day provided gentle indirect light. Perfect.
(Due to the vagaries of SmugMug, if you click the image to see a larger version, depending on your screen resolution, it may actually display smaller. You can use the size controls at the top of the window to see larger sizes.)
Canon SX20IS at 28mm and Super Macro. F2.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, a small amount of Recovery for the whites. Blackpoint slightly right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landsccape preset. Cropped slightly from the left for composition.
4/20/2010
Daff Looking Up after Rain
My wife Carol and I are in Florida for a week, but we flew in late last night so I am still working on the shots from last week around home in Maine. In that same interval of sun between the storms on Sunday, the Daffodils in the yard were fully open but bowed over and hanging down almost to the ground. I flipped out the LCD on the Canon and got this from ground level looking up.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. F3.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky and for the yellow highlights. A touch of Fill Light. Blackpoint slightly right. Added Clarity and just a smidge of Vibrance (had to be careful or the yellows would have blocked up). Sharpen landscape preset.
From The Yard: Kennebunk ME.
4/18/2010
Daff on the Rocks
Happy Sunday.
This lonely Daffodil, posed against a granite bolder with its lichen in my daughter’s piano teacher’s yard, somewhat caged by dry stems, caught my eye. The bright yellow, the vibrant green, the texture of the stone and the delicate tracery of the weeds. This is another shot that employs the long end of the macro zoom on the SX20IS to good advantage.
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent and macro. F5.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the yellow in the Daff, a touch of Fill Light to offset Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and just a tiny amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
4/17/2010
Coltsfoot
I am not sure I am done with the NYC images, but we will go back to Maine this morning (appropriate since I am physically back in ME this morning). This is Coltsfoot…a plant I honestly never noticed before this spring. It was abundantly blooming way ahead of anything else out in the waste ground of our local gravel pit. Could not miss it with those bright yellow flowers! I caught this clump by zooming in to 560mm and using the macro setting. It was on a little rise of ground (pile of sandy gravel), and by getting down low I was able to put the flowers against the out of focus background of the far edge of the pit many hundreds of yards away. Hence the bokeh. The dark band is trees. When I got it in Lightroom, I cropped from the top for composition. I am really enjoying saying “this looks even better at larger sizes” (on weiw.lightshedder.com if you click on the image above) with the images from the Canon. I often could not say that with images from the Sonys I was using. 🙂
Canon SX20IS at 560mm and macro. F5.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, besides the cropping already mentioned, I added Clarity and Vibrance, moved the Blackpoint slightly right, and employed the Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
This is a more standard shot, which perhaps shows the plant to better advantage, but is a less interesting image. Also at 560mm equivalent and macro. This time taken from on top of a sand/gravel pile looking down on the flowers.
4/15/2010
Bryant Park Color
I had a few moments between the training I am doing and a dinner engagement, so I walked over to Bryant Park, a few blocks from our hotel. It was a beautiful spring day in the city after a hard winter and the park was well populated with New Yorkers enjoying. They are in the middle of a restoration project that includes the lawns and flower plantings. This little juxtaposition was played out in varieties all around the boarder of the park under the trees. Of course, what caught my eye here was the contrast in color and shape.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F2.8 @ 1/30th @ ISO 80. Programmed auto.
Light processing in Lightroom. Added Clarity and just a little Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From NYC 2010.