Posts in Category: macro
8/17/2009
Mature Indian Pipe Flower
I have seen Indian Pipe at this stage of development, and photographed it here at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge…it was pinker last year…but somehow I never looked inside the blossom. Indian Pipe begins well drooped over on its stalk and only goes erect as the blossom matures. Inside, as you can see, are all the flower parts. I think these are actually beginning to form seeds.
Indian Pipe is often thought of as fungus…deriving nutrients from decomposing plant matter…but it is actually a fungal symbiont, taking its nutrients from the fungus it is associated with. Generally symbiont provide sugars from photosynthesis in exchange for the minerals they get from the fungus, but the Indian Pipe actually robs the fungus of sugars it got from another symbiont in exchange for minerals. More parasite that symbiont, when you come right down to it.
This shot was taken right down to it too…using the flip out LCD on the H50 at ground level.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F3.2 @ 1/40th @ ISO 200. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, cropped a bit for a tighter view. Mild Recovery for the white of the flower. Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and Vibrance, and Landscape sharpen.
This is a view of a pair of fully mature flowers from straight above.
Indian Pipe from Straight Up
8/8/2009
In the Heart of the Rose
Macros always provide a striking view. Somehow the most ordinary objects become interesting when seen at larger than life size from an uncommon distance. With some things…flowers in particular…macros reveal shape and form we normally overlook. This shot was taken from centimeters away, with the camera lens actually down inside the flower. It was early evening, and the light was soft. The hardest part was selecting the point of focus. With a shot like this, it has to be the stamens, otherwise the whole shot looks out of focus. If the stamens are sharp we can tolerate some softness in the petals.
Sanyo VPC CG10 at about 38mm equivalent. F3.5 @ 1/40th @ ISO 50. Programed auto.
Just basic added Vibrance and Clarity and Landscape sharpen preset in Lightroom.
From The Yard, Kennebunk ME.
8/6/2009
Strange Shapes from the Sea
After a storm Parson’s Beach is a rich trove of amazing things from the sea. I always like the shapes the seaweed takes and makes. This very low angle shot, taken from beach level below the seaweed itself, emphasizes the bizarre forms. I really like the flip out LCD on the H50, but I am forever dragging my lens cap and strap in the sand. I have learned to check it before I stuff it back into my camera bag with the camera.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F4.0 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Cropped slightly from both bottom and top in Lightroom. Added Vibrance and Clarity, blackpoint to the right. Graduated filter effect from the top to reduce the brightness of the background.
And here is the more conventional view.
Strange Shapes from the Sea Too
7/30/2009
Happy and Foamy by the Sea
A spike of Meadowsweet among the reeds a few yards from the rocky edge of the ocean. Looks cheerful to me.
This is one of those where I flipped out the LCD and held the camera at arms’ length to frame the shot with wide-angle macro.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Just the basic added Vibrance and Clarity and sharpen in Lightroom.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
7/29/2009
Elephant Head?
I don’t actually know if Elephant’s Head is what these tiny flowers are called. Tiny? The open blossom is less then 1/4 inch across. This is another shot from Rachel Carson NWR, taken along the mile loop of trail…a loop that rarely disappoints photographically.
I took this shot from ground level, using the flip out LCD of the H50 and pointing the camera up under the blooms. From above the large pistol of the plant is not obvious, but from this angle it dominates.
Of course the bokeh is almost as interesting as the plant itself.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F2.7 @ 1/40th @ ISO 160. Programed auto.
Cropped from the right in Lightroom for composition. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Landscape sharpen. I used some Recovery for the background.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
7/18/2009
Happy Harvester
Of course the happy part is pure anthropomorphism. Can bees be happy? I certainly don’t know, but the sight of one busy in a flower makes me happy, once I get by my diffuse fear of stinging insects.
It was a brilliant day at the Coastal Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Maine, and the high sun cast strong shadows, but picked out all the subtle detail in both petals and bee. One of the advantages of the articulated LDC on the H50 is that I can hold the camera one-handed, well away from me, out over a bed of flowers, for this kind of close in and personal shot.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Just my basic added Vibrance and Clarity and Landscape sharpen preset in Lightroom. There was a bit of purple fringing along the bottom petal edge which I also removed in Lightroom.
From Coastal Maine Botanical Garden.
And a second bee in flower from the same day…this time in open shade.
Happy Harvester 2
7/17/2009
Pretty as a Prince (and not bothered at all)
Just catching some rays beside the forest pool at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Maine. Not bothered at all by the photographer down on his knees beside him…or by the camera inches away. Prince of his domain and confident with it.
As you can see, I utilized the swing-out LCD on the H50 to get right down on the ground for this shot. Who could resist?
Another visitor to the Botanical Gardens saw me down there, and commented to my wife who was also watching me, “You folks must be from the city.” I guess she assumed only a city-folk would be that interested in an old frog! I missed the opportunity to educate her on the wonder to be found in the common sights of home, the creatures and plants of her backyard, since she was gone by the time I levered myself back to my feet and turned. Ah well.
The Coastal Maine Botanical Garden by the way, is a world-class facility tucked away (way away) in a corner of the Maine coast, pretty literally out…if not exactly in the middle of no where…at least at no where’s inner edge. If you have an interest in plants and gardens, it should be part of any planned trip to Maine. You will see a few more shots (maybe quite a few 🙂 from there over the next few days.
Sony DCS H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Cropped slightly from the top for composition in Lightroom. Added Vibrance and Clarity, and Landscape sharpen preset.
From Coastal Maine Botanical Garden.
And a second view of his Captain of the Guards.
Captain of the Guards
7/7/2009
And White Campion for my Banner!
This is another shot that is easy to visualize and difficult to do. I tried several times, with the Campion which was standing tallest and with the Vetch which was equally dramatic. This is what I was after.
Take a good long look at the image, because what I am about to tell you will change your perception of it, and I want your original impression well fixed.
Tell-tale shadow
Only when I got it all processed and uploaded to Wide Eyed In Wonder (my smugmug site) did I notice that there was a dark shadow across the lower petals. I had hopefully attributed it to the petals being folder under in processing, but now that I looked closely I saw it for what it was…the shadow of my lens.
Unacceptable. I can stand natural obstructions, and often leave them in when others might edit them out, but I do not want something that I put there to spoil the image.
I tried some Local Adjustment brush work in Lightroom, but the petals have a texture that was destroyed by adjustments in brightness or exposure. The only option to save the image (imho) was to take it into Photoshop Elements for some work with the clone tool. It is rare that I have to resort to anything beyond the tools available in Lightroom, but this was the exception. The clone tool allows you to pick up a piece of the image…color, texture…the whole thing…and paint it over another section of the image. It is the way you magically remove those protruding branches, bits of grass in front of faces, etc. In this case all I wanted to do was remove the shadow. To do that I selected the petal right above the shadow, and carefully painted its texture and exposure over the darkened areas. This works so well that on the left petal, I was able to paint in a water droplet at the tip of the petal.
Is this cheating? I don’t have a good answer for that. Certainly I would have preferred not to have gotten the shadow in there in the first place, but given the tools at our disposal today, I saw no reason to leave it there and let it spoil a shot that I really liked.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Besides the processing outlined above, in Lightroom I cropped slightly from the right to eliminate a distraction and improve composition. Recovery for the sky. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Landscape sharpen. I was able to retain all those edits when exporting the file to Photoshop Elements, so the find version includes those changes and the editing I did in PE.
7/5/2009
Who Knew? Green Bee on Blanket Flower
Who knew? There are green bees! Tiny. Very strange. Maybe even the original of the Green Hornet (though, outside comics, there is not such actual insect.) It took me an hour of searching to find a name for this critter on the internet…or rather to confirm the name that popped immediately to mind. Green bee. Genius Agapostemon. Appears there are many species and I am not certain which this is, but it is without doubt, a green bee…tiny and jewel like in its metalic splendor, posed on this Blanket Flower, right in our front yard.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F3.2 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, just a slight crop from the right for composition, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Landscape sharpen preset.
And here without the bee, an even closer view of the Blanket Flower.
Extreme Blanket Flower
7/4/2009
Pink Pogonia Orchid
Happy 4th of July!
On the way back from my Fernald Brook adventure, I ran into an area where the road I had to walk was completely under water…not much water…a few inches. It was an old road that, near as I could tell, skirts the edge of a disused gravel pit, now turned into a kind of sumpy wetland. Not exactly where you would go to search for an increasingly rare orchid in Maine. But there it was, a patch of well over a hundred fragile plants, all in bloom.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Cropped slightly in Lightroom for composition. Recovery for the highlights. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Blackpoint to the right. Landscape sharpen preset. I also used the Local Adjustment Brush to paint a mask over the background and then decreased Clarity and Sharpness to the max, and Contrast slightly, to give the effect of a shallower depth of field. One of the issues with small Point and Shoots on macro is that the physical size of the aperture gives greater depth of field than the corresponding lens on a DSLR, which makes it harder to separate the subject from a potentially distracting background. LAB in Lightroom to the rescue.
And, for contrast, just a few yards away where the moss was taking over I found a whole cluster of these Sweet White Violets blooming the gloom of the overhanging trees and bank very late in the season.
Sweet White Violet
F3.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100 in the more subdued light.