The beautiful fire-pink, and an ultra-long exposure

As always, click the image to enlarge

A fire-pink, Silene virginica, in portraiture. Taken in situ on a steep roadbank in Shawnee State Forest, Scioto County, Ohio. It was so deep into twilight that the eastern whip-poor-wills were singing.

Yesterday was an epic day with a crew of really great people. Most of it was spent doing aquatic work in a high quality stream near the Adams/Scioto county line. We found scads of interesting stuff and I'm sure I'll share some of that later.

After we packed up the gear late in the afternoon, John Howard and I had not yet had enough. We decided to head to the depths of Shawnee State Forest to seek out a rare and beautiful mint, Meehania cordata. John had recently found a population in a wonderful little hollow, and we made images of the plant along with a number of other things.

As there was still some light when we finished with the Meehania, we opted to seek out the very rare early stoneroot, Collinsonia verticillata, along a sparsely traveled forest road. We knew we'd find it there, and we surely did. Photos were made, and as we did so it became so dim that the whip-poor-wills began to call.

Sprinkled through the area were many fire-pinks, Silene virginica. As a last hurrah, I decide to do some portraiture work with one of the plants. By now, it was so dark that my auto focus could barely detect and lock onto the subject. I know, I can always use manual focus but I generally figure that if it's too dark for auto focus to work, it's probably time to pack it in.

Anyway, I set up my black velvet swath behind the subject - fire-pink typically grows among other plants and I wanted to completely isolate the subject - then proceeded to shoot. This image was made with the tripod-mounted Canon 5D IV and Canon's stellar 100mm f/2.8L macro lens. I shot in live view to stop internal mirror movement, and used the two-second shutter delay to eliminate any operator-induced shake after pressing the shutter button. The ISO was 200, and the aperture was at f/7.1.

Shutter speed? An absurdly low 10 (ten) seconds! One of the reasons that John and I stayed out so late and kept at this was the virtual absence of any wind. Rare are the conditions that you can shoot a flower with a ten second shutter speed and not end up with a major blur-fest.