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.

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.