Rose Pogonia, a beautiful orchid, and two photographic tactics to document it

 

Brown's Lake Bog, a relict kettle bog in Wayne County, Ohio. It is owned by the Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. There isn't much open water left. The natural process of ecological succession dooms these interesting habitats eventually. Its ultimate fate is to become forest, following the shrubby succession that we see in the foreground. The treelet at the front left is one of our most interesting and beautiful bog plants, Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix). Were it not infused with urushiol, the same itchy substance in Poison Ivy, I have little doubt that this sumac would be sold in the nursery trade.

I first saw this place probably 30+ years ago, and it's probably been 15-20 years since I last visited. Shauna and I made the trip up last Monday, June 15. There's lots of rare plants in this bog - indeed, nearly everything in Brown's Lake Bog is rare, even if not formally state-listed as is the protagonist of this post.

As always, click the photo to enlarge.

Mid-June is the time to catch Rose Pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides) at the peak of its glory. The little orchid is listed as threatened by the Ohio DNR's Division of Natural Areas, the Department's botanical and ecological agency. There are probably hundreds of these orchids blooming in a good year.

We were there literally at the crack of dawn, when the light is probably best for botanical photography. A good thing, too, as it became a bright sunny day and those are terrible conditions for plant photography, except at the very beginning or end of the day.

The only tricks to making the shot above were 1) going prostrate on the boardwalk to get on my subject's level (very important in plant photography) and 2) finding a subject largely free of immediate background subjects that would create a cluttered look and minimize the focus on my target. I was - as nearly always these days - using my Canon R5. The lens is Canon's amazing 180mm f/3.5 macro, possibly the sharpest lens Canon has ever made. My settings were f/11, ISO 200, and 1/13 second exposure.

The shutter speed may seem slow, and it probably wouldn't work if one was handholding the camera. It'd be hard to impossible to get sharp images. Especially with the old, discontinued 180mm macro lens, which is heavy and lacks image stabilization. But unless I am using flash with this setup, and that's primarily for insects, I almost always work this rig off of a tripod. That's what I did here, using my tiny Oben CIT-1000 tripod. When its legs are splayed out, the tripod is flat on the ground, and your camera rig isn't much higher

Once I have a composition that I like, I fire away using the camera's two-second timer delay feature. That way, nothing is touching the camera when it fires, eliminating any possible human-caused movement. Of course, if the plant moves due to breezes, the shot will not be sharp. That's another reason to be afield very early, when wind is often absent or far less than it might be as the day progresses.

This is the same plant as above but using black velvet. This technique can be overdone, but it is cool on special occasions such as this. I use 8.5 x 11-inch sheets of black velvet with sticky backs. I glue them to cardboard of the same dimensions, for rigidity. Then merely hold or otherwise place the velvet behind the subject, which can create a dramatic visual effect as well as eliminate any and all background distractions while doing no harm to the plants.

Settings will always vary from the same shot without the velvet, due to changes in how the camera's sensor interprets the light with and without the velvet. In general, I prefer wider apertures with plants - anywhere from f/4 to f/7.1, typically - but velvet allows for the use of narrow apertures as there is no background clutter that would create a lot of undesirable mess behind the subject if very small apertures were used.

For this shot, I chose f/16 while keeping the ISO at 200. This dropped the shutter speed to a very slow 1/6 second, but who cares what the shutter speed is as long as the subject isn't moving. Shutter speed, at least under good plant photography conditions, is the least important setting in my opinion. I have taken many plant shots at multi-second exposures (up to 10 seconds!) and they are tack sharp. Wind, even mild breezes, is not the plant photographer's friend and windless periods are the best time to shoot plants.

Plant photography would seem easy on its face, as they don't move. It is certainly easier than shooting a Chimney Swift in flight, or a hummingbird darting around a flower patch. Nonetheless, making good botanical imagery involves some patience, thought, and special camera techniques.