This Year's Poppies: All Popped Out

I've run a few posts recently showing shots of last year's poppies, but this one was shot this year on Memorial Day. I love coming out to the garden and seeing these bright orange petals just blowing in the breeze, but unfortunately they don't last too long: one good rain and all the petals are gone. Also, these poppies aren't spreading as fast in my garden as I've seen them in other gardens. I may have to plant some more just to keep them going. I'd love to see the whole front of the garden filled with them.

Photographically the only problem that I run into with open poppies is that they are very reflective. If you look just to the right of center you can see little line of highlights that are nearly specular (detail-less) highlights. I shot this frame without a tripod (I was being lazy) and there was a breeze blowing, so I cranked the shutter speed up to 1/1600 second and shot nearly wide open (f/5) to toss the background out of focus.

Two days later, of course, it rained hard and the poppies were all gone: show over. I'm hoping some breeder is working on a poppy that will re-bloom all summer. Either that or I'll have to Superglue the petals back on so that I can enjoy them longer.

Photo note: Shot handheld with a Nikon D90 and a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom; recorded in both RAW and Jpeg simultaneously.