Here area couple more from last Monday’s trilliumfest.
Halfway down the path to the brook are a pair of the plants that come up every year and I photograph them annually. Their leaves are darker which really enables the petals to stand out. As you might guess, these are surrounded by pines.
As I was walking back up the path I noticed this one standing in front of a large pine, enabling me to compose with a natural dark background. There was enough distance between them so I could shoot at f/16 and still have the tree soft.
Stephen Gingold Nature Photography Blog 
The pine trunk does make an excellent neutral background in the second picture.
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It’s the sort of thing we look for and occasionally have to good fortune to find.
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I like the soft background in the second picture – not always possible! Beautiful images! 🙂
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Thanks, Ann. A lucky find but luck counts as much as planning, I think. 🙂
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And luck comes from keeping your eyes open and looking around you carefully… 🙂
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Very Nice Steve! Enjoyed seeing them!
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Thanks, Reed.
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Beautifully striped too. It’s a joy to have a mental map of where the flowers are.
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Yes, I have a few spots that I visit annually that rarely disappoint. There should be some lady’s slippers here soon.
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Being a sucker for symmetry I am sold. Especially the second one. A soft background at f/16. Who knew?
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That f/16 effect is made easier by the construction of a macro lens but even then it is not often you can get this result at that aperture.
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Delightful!
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Aren’t they? Happy little woodland flowers.
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Such beautiful flowers. Both fine images, the second is super.
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Thanks, Tom. My models are awesome posers and they work cheap.
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I still don’t understand how you always have such well-lit images in the woods. Maybe the woods I’ve been trying to shoot in are deeper and darker than these! Even a reflector didn’t help last weekend when I was trying to photograph stark white milkweeds in deep shade. If you don’t mind my asking, what ISO and shutter speed went along with your f/16? One thing I’ve learned is that handheld at f/60 may help with lighting, but it sure doesn’t do a thing for sharpness!
All that aside, these are wonderful photos: particularly that second one. I do like the inclusion of the pine cone in the first. That sort of juxtaposition is always fun.
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I just rolled in with a quick ps on my mind — I never remember to factor in shooting in RAW, plus the addition of post processing in the form of Lightroom, Photoshop, Nik filters, and etc. I’m always posting straight from the camera, and that makes a difference!
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Yes it does. Of course, the camera has built in algorithms that decide what the image should look like as a jpeg. You mentioned doing some burning and dodging once a while back so I thought you did more processing. Now a lot of folks pride themselves on “getting it right in the camera” which works for them. That can happen at times but when you shoot in raw you get everything just like the old film negatives and then decide what you want to use and what to discard. And then the adventure starts. 🙂 Otherwise the manufacturer decides what your image should look like in creating the jpeg.
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That last sentence really is food for thought. I’ve never heard anyone put it quite that way before.
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I read that a long time ago so can’t say I came up with it but that doesn’t diminish its truth. When you think about it, one can’t imagine Ansel ever sending his film off to Kodak. They drove me to digital in the early 2000’s after destroying several of my Acadia transparencies. Didn’t even offer a roll of film. That’s not exactly the same thing but similar. Aside from the immediacy of coming in the house, looking at, and processing the images is the occasion when something gets printed the same day. It’s nice to have that kind of control from click to share/print.
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For the second image the ISO was 400 and exposure 5 sec at f/16. The first was 1.6sec at f/11, also ISO 400. Of course both were tripod mounted with the 180 macro. But as we’ve discussed before, I rarely handhold my camera for my shots…even at much higher exposures. I’ve a terminal case of the shakes.
These woods are fairly dark although not as dark as some and maybe not like yours. But it was low light a little before the sun was coming through the trees. I expose for the whites, then alt+click on the white slider in Lightroom (if you are using Camera Raw you can do the same) and raise the level until just a touch of white shows up then slip back a tiny bit so as not to clip them. If I have to I will dodge the whites also but did not have to do that with these. There are some other things I do in Photoshop I could share if you wish but I think that you don’t use it? If I am wrong about that let me know.
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No, I’m still muttering about learning how to use those post-processing tools. I was going to do it during the great lockdown, but I ended up being able to work, so all those great at-home projects went on the back burner!
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I haven’t been able to work, but I have been able to get out to shoot in the morning and do yardwork in the afternoon so a lot of what I thought i would get done hasn’t happened here either. If we each take an oar we might get the boat moving forward.
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Beautiful work…I love the way one petal is brushing the leaf in the second photo.
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Thanks. That’s a little trillium tenderness at play. 🙂
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