Posts in Category: flowers
6/18/2009
Asctiou Garden's
Asctiou Gardens is an Azalea and Rhododendron garden, on the Japanese model, in Northeast Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Maine, near Acadia National Park. It was originally planted and landscaped by Charles Savage in the late 50s and has gone through several incarnations since. It is now managed and tended by the Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve and a staff of volunteers. It is beautiful in any season, but it is stunning when the Azaleas and Rhododendron are in bloom. I have been on MDI three times in season, and each time have come away amazed. The variety of colors, the massed blossoms, the vibrancy of it all against the water features and delicate green lines of the carefully tended trees and landscape…it all just short of too much.
These are all pretty straitforward shots with minimal processing in Lightroom. I used both the macro extremes of the Sony DSC H50. Close in and tel, for contrasting effects. Close in for deep detail, tel for compression. (See Lupine Lessons: Point of View on Point and Shoot Landscape for more on using your zoom and macro to good effect.)
In this array of shots, each thumbnail links back to the lightbox view at Wide Eyed In Wonder (my SmugMug site).
And one final vision, where the bokeh is as vital as the flowers themselves.
6/16/2009
Lupines in Close
Lupines are impressive plants. A little research yesterday turned up the fact that they are grown as a food crop, both for animal and human consumption, in many parts of the world. The beans have to be soaked in salt water for several days to remove toxins, but after soaking they are used in dishes in Germany, in particular, around the Mediterranean Sea and through the near-East. Native Americans in both North and South America harvested and ate the Lupine beans.
This close up shot shows the finer detail of the flower structure, which is often obscured in the view of the massed flowers.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Cropped slightly in Lightroom for composition. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Blackpoint moved right. Landscape sharpen preset.
From Mount Desert Island/Bar Harbor ME 2009.
And, one more shot to show the variety of colors in this patch.
Variety Lupine
6/15/2009
Lupines
Lupines. Perhaps my view is distorted by too much exposure to “The Lupine Lady”, one of my childrens’ favorite picture books, but I am always amazed by the display of lupines in Maine in June. There is one patch near my home that I have photographed just about every year.
This year I got my lupine fix on a trip to Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island near Bar Harbor ME. They were all along the highway on the way up, and I spent most of our only sunny day on MDI looking for the stand I wanted to photograph (among other things of course). They tend to favor waste ground…roadsides and disused fields, and I wanted a proper background. This was it (or at least as close as I got this year).
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F4.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, just my standard added Clarity and Vibrance and the Landscape sharpen preset. I also nudged the blackpoint over to the right slightly and cropped just a bit at the top.
From Mount Desert Island/Bar Harbor ME 2009
An alternative view
Lupines
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6/10/2009
Fringed Puccon
I have mentioned twice now the scarcity of real prairie remnants on the North Dakota prairie. Everywhere you look it is wheat or soybean desert or the prairie-like mix of invasive plants, mostly Kentucky Bluegrass and Timothy. The section pictured yesterday, and one we found a few days before in better light are exceptions, not the rule. I say we found it, but of course the refuge Waterfowl Production Area manager who was our guide knew exactly where it was, as it harbors the last of the native prairie plants she hopes to see reestablished someday on the lands she manages.
Fringed Poccon is just one of the spring wildflowers found only on remnant short-grass prairie. As a bonus I am including images of a few of the others we found that day at the foot of this piece.
There are few cameras better for photographing wildflowers (imho) than the Sony H50. The articulated LCD allows shots from ground level, and the 2 cm close focus in macro makes close detail easy. The only drawback is that the small sensor size makes the relative size of the aperture, even wide open, physically small, which leads to more depth of field and more distracting backgrounds than some like in a wildflower shot. I have come to like the more present background as being closer to our actual experience of the flower in the flied, but I will admit to admiring those flower portraits where the bloom floats on sea of attractive but undistracting bokeh. This is not one of those. It is the flower as it sits in the world.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, some cropping for composition. Recovery for the bright yellows. Added Clarity and Vibrance, and Landscape sharpen preset.
From Prairies and Potholes 2009.
Wild Flax
Prairie Smoke
Pussy Toes
6/1/2009
Rhodora at Saco Heath
Lets get the Rhordora out of our systems. Saco Heath was awash in blooms on Memorial day. Here I offer a few more views.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F5.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, added Clarity and Vibrance, black point to the right. Standard sharpen. I also pulled a graduated filter up from the bottom to increase Clarity and Contrast for high detail, and one down from the top to darken the sky background.
And close up.
Rhodora Close In
5/31/2009
Impression of Rhodora
Generally speaking I am, as a photographer, a realist. I attempt to catch what is there, in all its glory. Sometimes it is fun, however, to mess around with an image in software just to see where it goes. The result is not strictly speaking real, but sometimes you have to stretch the truth to make it true to the experience, at least in the telling, or the portrayal in this case.
The Rhodora was just coming into bloom at Saco Heath in what is becoming, my girls tell me, our traditional family outing on Memorial Day. Many plants were vibrant, but there is still more to come. Interesting, since last Memorial Day the Rhodora at Saco Heath was all gone by when we visited.
The base image here is, as usual, taken with the Sony DSC H50, in this case, at full tele, 465mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
I started out in Lightroom with my usual processing. Added Clarity and Vibrance, sharpen, black point to the right. This is what it looks like.
the original
I am totally happy with this image and it stands alone as a real picture of what the massed Rhodora blooms looked like that day…but it does not, maybe, fully catch the impact of the day.
In Lightroom I made a Virtual Copy of the image. This creates a new copy that I can re-edit, but does not duplicate the original file on the hard-drive. It simply creates a second set of instructions for processing the original when exported from Lightroom.
I opened the VC in the develop module. I have tried this before with other images so I knew what I was about to do. Clarity slider all the way to to left, adding what amounts to negative clarity, and softening the whole image. Negative clarity also produces interesting halo effects at strong color boundaries. I boosted the Vibrance even more, and added a small amount of saturation. And undid the sharpening. Hay presto. In seconds I had an impressionistic version of the Rhodora image.
Does it do a better job of conveying the effect of the massed Rhodora blooms? Maybe. I like it anyway. How about you?
From Saco Heath 09.
5/30/2009
Warm as Flesh: Lady Slipper and Mosquito
Tired of Lady Slippers yet? Evidently this Lady Slipper in the sun was warm enough to fool a Mosquito into thinking it was flesh. (One less on me!)
Taken at the macro range of the tel end of the zoom on the H50 at 465mm equivalent, and from a low angle using the tip-out LCD: the background is nicely soft and full of bokeh. Using the far reaches of the zoom did, however, push the ISO up to 400 but the H50 managed a detailed image anyway. Not bad for a tiny sensor.
Sony DSC H50 at 465mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/125 @ ISO 400. Programed auto.
Cropped in Lightroom for composition. Just my usual added Clarity and Vibrance, and sharpen.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
5/29/2009
Luminous Lady Slipper
So, okay, I thought (and maybe you thought) that I was done with Lady Slippers. I got more and better shots of Lady Slippers this year than ever before because there were more and better Lady Slippers.
Then, last Saturday, I took a walk down to my local warbler hole for some birding and video (hopefully), and went off on a side trail looking for Rhodora in bloom, and there they were…thousands of Lady Slippers! Lady Slippers in the early sun, sneaking in across the forest floor. 1000’s sounds like an exaggeration, I know, but it is not. Within a 1/4 mile I am totally confident that a count of Lady Slippers visible from the trail would have totaled over 1000. I have never seen anything remotely like it.
When the light is behind a Lady Slipper, two things happen. Light gets caught in the fine hairs that cover the whole plant, and the inflated petal just lights up as though it was filled with, well, light! Catching the effect is difficult but not impossible. Maybe best is when you can get the flower against a dark background where the sun isn’t hitting, but a well out-of-focus forest isn’t all bad. Bokeh. Lots of potential for Bokeh.
In this shot, I found the added bonus of the Star Flower nestled up against the Lady Slipper.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro (taken just about touching the LS). F3.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Slight Recovery in Lightroom, along with added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen. Blackpoint to the right. Cropped for composition. Because the background was a bit too distracting, I used the Local Adjustments brush to paint on a mask over the background, and then decreased Clarity and Contrast.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
2/28/2009
Barberry (Laudholm Farms)
Evidently I have never been to Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Center) when the Barberry was in bloom, or perhaps, as it seems, it is simply a bumper year for wildflowers and flowering shurbs of all kinds. I certainly remember nothing like the Barberry show this year.
Barberry produces pendent clusters of yellow flowers, like hanging bells of yellow bells, along the length of the sharp barbed whips. For this shot, I framed a whip against the sky and fields of the farm.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Because I wanted to get the foreground detail and maintain realistic exposure of the background, I had to let the camera underexpose the flowers. In Lightroom, I used the Fill Light tool to bring them back up, remembering that they were not in full sun and need to be darker. Added Clarity, and very slight added Vibrance (vibrance can easily over do the yellows). Sharpen.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
And here, for context is a shot of the underside of a laden whip.
Barberry from Below
And one showing the larger structure of the plant.
The full context...
5/27/2009
Fringed Polygala (Gaywings)
This is a somewhat unconventional composition but the subject suggest it. Normally you would want the subject facing into the image, not pushing its way out (not necessarily terms we apply to flowers, but in this case they are apt). And, again, in this case, we violate the rule because it adds a dynamic tension that makes the image (I think) more interesting.
This flower is only about 1 inch in diameter and grows about that from the ground, so I am right down on the forest floor for this shot, with the camera resting among the ferns and other wildflowers (carefully so as not to crush anything).
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F4.0 @ 1/125th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, just my usual added Clarity and Vibrance and sharpen. Blackpoint slid to the right slightly to intensify the color.
From Rachel Carson NWR Seasons.
And the more traditional view.
The more tradition view of Fringed Polygala