Just out of interest I looked back at last year's photos and found that before the end of April I had been out on several wild flower safaris. But last year April was exceedingly dry and relatively warm. After April, however, the weather deteriorated into the wettest summer we have had for years, and my wild flower safaris came to a full stop.
So I decided that this year's wild flower photography had to start this week. Last Spring also coincided with the purchase of my E330, which had hit rock bottom prices due to the introduction of newer models. Although the newer models have Live View facilties, which had been pioneered in the E330, they lacked a folding out LCD screen, which makes low level close up photography so much more convenient. I put the camera on a very small and light tripod, which can place the camera almost at ground level, and pull out the folding LCD so that I can look at it from above. I still have to kneel down to compose and focus, but at least I don't have to lie down on damp grass!
Because the E330 was a new tool this time last year, I had not yet honed my skills on it. Over the last year I have gradually found out what works best for flowers, and what works best for butterflies and insects. So I'm looking forward to getting a lot of good shots this year.
When I first started photographing wild flowers seriously, about five years ago, I tended to do a lot of 'record' shots to help me familiarise myself with all the varieties. Quite often I would not know what a flower was until I got back home and compared my shots against several wild flower recognition books I have. It's surprising how difficult it can be to identify flowers this way, and I would take shots of leaves and stalks etc to further aid identification.
Now that I am more familiar with the different varieties I am more interested in taking more 'artistic' photographs, using narrow depth of field to isolate single blooms, and creating nice blurry out of focus backgrounds. Putting the camera on a tripod theoretically means that you don't have to worry about the shutter speed so can concentrate on selecting exactly the right aperture to give the right depth of focus. The 'right' aperture might give a fairly slow shutter speed, which does not matter as far as camera shake is concerned, because the camera is on a tripod. But the subject, although anchored to the ground, is very susceptible to the slightest breeze making it jump all around the place. So I spend a lot of time after composing and focusing, just waiting for that brief second when the subject is completely still. Of course, I could use flash, which provides sufficent light to provide a high shutter speed. But in general I find flash gives an unsatisfactory result, giving almost black backgrounds and blown out specular highlights on petals.
I started in Holmebrook Valley Park, then moved up to Linacre Woods and then drove over to Tideswell Dale. Holmebrook Valley Park yielded up this shot of a cowslip:
Also in the park I found a few clumps of Greater Stitchwort, most were in bad condition, but one small clump had a few pristine blooms:
Moving up to Linacre Woods therewere quite a few bluebells out, but it will be another week or so before the ground is completely carpeted with them.
There were also plenty of wood anenomes, most of them pure white, but I prefer the ones which are tinged with purple:
Tideswell Dale proved rather disappointing. There were a few more butterbur flowers around than I saw a few weeks ago but other species were few and far between. A distinct lack of butterflies as well. I did spot one orangetip but it was the only one and did not stop to have its photograph taken. But a few Red Campions were just emerging:
And finally, lest I forget, a Forget-me-not:
No comments:
Post a Comment