The Orange Blossom (is) Special

Well, I could hardly tempt you with a photo of the bud (see the previous posting) and not show you the blossom--so here it is. Actually, I think the bud in that posting is the one in the bottom right of this shot. These buds just pop open (I wonder if that's why they're called poppies?) one morning without much warning--you usually don't see the color start to emerge, as you do with other flowers. I shot this one using a bit of fill-in flash to compete with the backlighting and used the flash-compensation setting on my D90 body to set the flash to about 2/3 stop less than the daylight exposure (if you have a D90, the switch for this is on the left side of the prism housing--look it up in your manual, it's easy to use). But the flash was still a little "shiny" looking to me on the orange petals, so I burned them down a touch in Photoshop. Also, I wanted the background to be out of focus, but was able to shoot at the relatively small aperture of f/8 (normally I'd shoot much wider, at f/4, for example) and still keep the background soft because I was using a Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED IF AF-S VR Nikkor Zoom Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras set at 240mm--or the equivalent of 360mm in 35mm (with the cropping factor). This lens does not have the greatest bokeh in the world (bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the out-of-focus region) but it's not too bad. Anyway, I just finished updating my book Exposure Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent so you'll have to forgive me for explaining so much about the exposure--it takes a few weeks to shake this stuff out of my head.

Exposure: Shot at ISO 200 at 1/60 sec., at f/8, with fill-in flash and on a Manfrotto 190XPROB 3 Section Aluminum Pro Tripod tripod. Captured in RAW.

Admiring the Surprise Gift of the Poppies

If you had never seen one open before, who would think that this hairy little pod would open up to become such a cheerful orange flower? But that's one of the things I like about poppies: they start out as an almost alien-looking plant form pushing up through the ground in April, then continue their mysterious appearance by growing these strange buds on graceful--but equally hairy--stems that seem right out of Little Shop of Horrors. Then you come out one sunny morning in May and the garden is full beautiful orange or red blossoms. It's almost as if nature is testing your patience to see if you will be curious enough to wait for the May surprise. I photographed this one last year (on May 31st) and just noticed yesterday that this year's buds are beginning to look very similar. It pays to scout around the garden this time of year to see if you can find interesting shapes and forms before the flowers actually blossom. I shot this with a Nikon D90 (now discontinued, see yesterday's posting) with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom and a close-up extension tube (not sure which size, probably 20mm) with existing light coming from behind the bud.

Exposure notes: Shot at ISO200, f/5.6 at 1/100 second in Shutter Priority mode, on a tripod. Capture in RAW.

Follow Graceful Curves in Nature

In the same way that a gently curving path through a forest or field is more interesting to explore than a straight rigid one, a graceful curving line in a photograph is more interesting for the eye to explore. Rather than delivering the eye from one point to another with great efficiency (railroad tracks pointing to the horizon, for example), curved lines entice your eye to wander, to study details along the way at a more leisurely pace and, as Glen Cambell once sang (does anyone remember Glen Cambell?), they are simply more gentle on your mind (actually Glen sang "Gentle on My Mind" but I think we can invoke some poetic license here). Curves invoke feelings of softness, slowness, gracefulness and even safety--you're less likely to fall off a gently curving rock, for example, than a sheer straight cliff.

Nature is a particularly rich source of soft curving lines and you can find them in everything from the human form (some have more curving lines that others, granted) to streams meandering through a meadow to the curve of an ocean beach. Interestingly, curves tend to work best in a photograph when you show only a section of them--as I did with this snippet of a bleeding heart branch. By cropping in on the line a bit you can isolate the most interesting part of the curve and, as with the old show biz adage, you leave the eye wanting more. Rather than photographing the entire curving limb of a saguaro cactus, for example, you might just close in on the elbow and reveal the interesting contrast between the rough texture of the plant and the softness of its shape.

Photographing Dragonflies, Part II

In yesterday's post I talked about giving yourself a personal photographic challenge and my desire to get a really killer shot of a dragonfly. I haven't been back over to the pond yet to put my new found bits of dragonfly-photo knowledge to work, but today I'll share with you the many things I learned about photographing these beautiful and mysterious creatures.

Photographing dragonflies kind of reminds me of photographing the Blue Angels because, as I wrote a few weeks ago about shooting those ultra-fast jets, you need to plan a strategy if you want to get sharp photos. Here are some of the things I observed in my first day of shooting that may help you if you try to photograph them:

• You'll need to find a location with a lot of dragonflies in order to photograph them, of course, and the best place to look is along the edges of a pond or stream. I found hundreds of them zipping along the edges of the small neighborhood pond where I was shooting. Interestingly, since I grew up near this pond, I have always known it was a favorite spot for dragonflies, so finding them was easy.
• Observe them for a while before you begin shooting. While they are indeed incredibly fast creatures, they tend to come back to rest on the same favorite spots time and time again. If you see a dragonfly land on a particular leaf once, odds are they will return to that same exact spot.
  
• Shoot them at rest. While my ultimate goal is to get a good in-flight shot, I'm trying to build up my skills and confidence a bit by shooting them at rest. Of course, I won't pass up any attempts to get a good in-flight shot, but for now I'll be happy to get a great resting shot.
  
• Use a long lens and extension tubes if you have them. The more distance you can put between yourself and your quarry, the better the odds that they'll ignore you. I have been shooting with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom with a Kenko 20mm extension tube.
• Use a small aperture. Considering the magnification I'm using with the 70-300mm lens (usually at 300mm, which is 450mm in 35mm terms on my Nikon D90 body) and the fact that I'm using extension tubes, depth of field (near-to-far sharpness) is almost nonexistent. You must shoot at a small aperture (I tried shooting between f/13 and f/22) to have any hope of a sharp photo.
• Keep your subject parallel to your sensor plane. Because there is so little depth of field you have to try to keep as much of the dragonfly as possible parallel to your camera body so that you're minimizing the depth (width or length, depending on your perspective) of the dragonfly body and wings. In the shot above, for example, the head and wings are pretty sharp, but the long extension of the body is not. Had I been off to the side more, I might have been able to make that body section sharper.
• Use a plain background. The thing I don't like about this shot is the mix of black and green in the background--a mix of leaves and dark water. Try to shoot with a totally plain (and out-of-focus) background. I will pay much more attention to that in the future since most of the shots I took on the first day were pretty much ruined by a busy background. Can I save them in Photoshop? Yes, some of them. Better to start with a plain background.

Obviously most of these tips are for using a DSLR camera, but you might find you can do an even better job with a point-and-shoot and a long optical zoom (5x or longer preferably). Getting good photos of insects is more about being patient and devoted than it is about long lenses or expensive cameras. In fact, many of the good dragonfly images I've seen on Flickr were shot with simple cameras.

In future postings I'll talk about using flash with dragonflies and also flash accessories (I'm going to try some this weekend, I hope). If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them.
By the way, when I was a kid we used to call these "sewing needles" and the myth was that if one caught you, he'd sew your mouth shut. So far none of them has tried to sew anything up!

Give Yourself a Creative (and Technical) Challenge

To grow in photography, to enhance your skills and your vision, requires that you continually push yourself beyond your comfort zone and work with subjects that are challenging. If all you ever photograph are the things that you're already good at shooting, you'll be living in a kind of technical and creative limbo--an artistic plateau. This happens to every artist in every medium, but it's important that you push through this invisible wall and experience the fun (and danger) of bigger and more demanding subjects.

Easier said than done and as I learned yesterday, it takes a lot of work to get good at something new. While out doing errands, I stopped by a small pond near my home to take a few practice panoramic shots so that I could get a bit more experienced with stitching images into panoramas before I take off on a few shooting trips this fall. After I finished shooting the sample pans, I took a walk to the edge of the pond just to see what was living there. I spent most of my childhood hanging out at this small park and it hasn't changed much since I was a kid. There is still a lot of pickerel weed growing along the edges and, as I discovered (and remembered from my childhood), dragonflies love pickerel weed.

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of beautiful dragonflies buzzing in and out of the weeds and among the wildflowers that grew at the edge of the pond. And as I was watching them, I had a bit of a photographic epiphany--I had never taken a really great photograph of a dragonfly and I've always wanted to do that. So I went back to the car, got out my close-up gear and decided to spend a few minutes to see if I could get any good shots. Well, of course, a few minutes turned into a few hours and by the end of the session I was getting incredibly excited about the subject--as well as incredibly frustrated.

Getting photos of these quick (very quick) little buggers is not easy! To call it a challenge is a huge understatement--it was like learning a whole new language. But I decided right then and there that I was going to make this my August goal: I was going to challenge myself to get some world-class dragonfly photos by the end of the month (or until they disappeared, anyway). I just absolutely loved photographing these beautiful creatures even though I knew that what I was getting was pretty lame photographically.

The shot above is probably the best of the lot and it is nice, but still has some (to my eyes, at least) technical flaws. I learned a lot about photographing insects in those few hours though and since the pond is only a short walk from my house, I'm going to spend as much free time as I can trying to improve my game. Tomorrow I'll tell you more about some of the very specific things I learned about shooting dragonflies--the frustrations, the techniques, the tools, etc. And we'll see if, by the end of the month or so, I can come up with a few really satisfying images.

In the meantime, think about a subject you've always wanted to master and see if you can't create a challenge for yourself. One you start to go after the subject seriously, I'm sure you'll find your pictures will grow much faster than you thought they would. And remember, growth and learning are always exponential things; once you get to the next level, you climb ever faster and ever higher to the next levels and pretty soon you'll be soaring around your new subjects like a dragonfly skimming along the surface of a pond.

Lay Down, Look Up

When I first got into digital photography I bought an Olympus C5050 camera that I still own and dearly love. It's a great 5 megapixel camera. One of the things I like about it is that the LCD is partially articulated--in other words, you can pull it away from the back of the camera body and angle it up. One of the many things that this makes it possible to do is to lay the camera on the ground and shoot up at low-lying subjects.

The first summer I had that camera I crawled around on my back lawn and in my gardens looking for things I could shoot up at from ground level. The neighbors must have thought I was nuts (who cares!). One of my favorite subjects for shooting like this are the thousands of grape hyacinths that grow in my yard (I have more flowers than grass in my lawn, trust me). By just laying down with the camera and aiming it up slightly I was able to shoot these tiny flowers (about 4 inches tall) as if they were towering trees. I love the look of them. The articulated LCD isn't necessary, but in this case it just made it a bit easier to see the composition without pushing my face into the lawn.

I have since bought a Canon A650 that has a fully articulated LCD (you can even turn it backwards to you can shoot photos of yourself!) and I still really enjoy that feature. If you're thinking of buying a new point-and-shoot, consider that feature (especially if you're deciding between one camera that has it and one that doesn't). The ability to pull/twist/turn the LCD really has some nice benefits (like shooting over your head and still being able to see the image). But regardless of the camera, next time you're shooting flowers (soon I hope--we're supposed to get 14" of snow this weekend) try laying the camera on the ground and shooting up.

Plan Your Spring Photography Garden

As I write this, my gardens are covered in snow, the temps are in the low 20s (and expected to go below zero by the end of the week) and spring seems a million miles away. But in reality, the first day of spring is only about 10 weeks away and already my mailbox is filling up with garden catalogs--and they save my life every winter!

I spend a lot of winter nights just daydreaming about what plants I'd like to grow and which would be the most interesting to photograph. The bleeding heart shown here, for example, is an incredibly easy-to-grow shade plant but provides one of the most photogenic flowers you'll ever see. And seedlings of this plant are really cheap (under $5) online. Most seed catalogs list literally thousands of flower (and veggie) seeds and it warms my photographer's soul just to look at all of those interesting colors and shapes.

Now is the time to think about some of the plants you'd like to photograph in the coming spring and summer months and to start hunting down good seed and plant catalogs. You can save a lot of money growing your own plants from seeds (or small seedlings bought online) and during the dead of winter many (if not all) online nurseries have substantial sales. The other benefit of starting from seeds is that you'll have a huge variety of potential plants compared to what you'll find in local garden centers.

To get you started, here are a few of my favorite online nurseries.

Plant Delights (biggest hosta seller in the world, lots of tropicals)

Park Seed Company (very high quality seed)

Burpee (the traditional company, many types of seeds)

Johnny's Seeds (that's a direct link to their free catalog)

Practice Your Macro Photography on House Plants

About this time of year I start to really miss my garden and laying on the warm ground in the sun taking close-up photos of my garden plants. One way that I get past this angst is to keep a lot of winter-flowering houseplants in the house so that I have something colorful to photograph and so that I can keep my macro skills honed.

Virtually all digital cameras are very good at close-up photography and most even have a special macro mode for working very close. In fact, many digital point-and-shoot cameras are just as good at close-up photography as much more sophisticated cameras. I have an Olympus camera that will focus down to about a half-inch from the lens!

The key issues in indoor macro photography are lighting and keeping the camera steady. While I sometimes resort to using the built-in flash (as I did for the shot of the clivia miniata shown here), I much prefer the soft light of a north-facing window. The plants may prefer to live in another window, but you can easily move them to whatever window works best for lighting. You can also use a table lamp and often the shade will soften the light nicely. But be sure you set the white balance to "tungsten" so that you don't get an overly-warm color shift.

Keeping the camera steady is especially important in macro work since tiny motions are magnified. If you have a tripod, use it. If not, use the arm of a chair or rest your elbows on a table to keep the camera steady. Steadiness is less of a problem with flash since the flash duration is extremely short and prevents camera jiggle. If your camera has an anti-shake feature, that's great too.

Most flower blossoms last a short time but your prints can keep the flowers alive all winter long!