Some spring wildflowers, and thoughts on the photography thereof

 

f/9, ISO 250, 1/100 - 100mm macro lens

A Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) grows before our eyes - or at least mine, at the time. I shot this poppy family member back on February 26 - a very early date. When I passed this spot on the trail a few hours earlier, I saw no sign of the flower. A fairly warm and virtually snowless February spurred southern Ohio wildflowers to erupt earlier than normal.

The image above and all of the following were made on either February 26, or March 9, at the Arc of Appalachia's Ohio River Bluffs Preserve, or their Chalet Nivale Preserve. Both are in Adams County, Ohio.

When I go afield with botanical photography as the objective, I generally pack three lenses: Canon (all my camera gear is Canon) 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, 16-35mm f/2.8 II wide-angle, and the 70-200mm f/2.8 II. In the case of these images, all were shot with the Canon R5 mirrorless camera. I have examples made with two of those lenses in this post, along with some thoughts on using the gear effectively to create wildflower portraits.

f/7.1, ISO 250, 1/8 second, 100mm macro lens

Harbinger-of-spring (Erigenia bulbosa) peeks from leaf litter. The hardy little parsley is one of the first spring (late winter!) wildflowers to emerge.

Even old dogs should be able to learn new tricks. At one time, I tended to use narrow apertures (often f/11 to f/16) for greater depth of field, and - horrors! - often flash. Then I met Debbie DiCarlo and we began teaching some photography classes together. I loved her botanical work and was astute enough to notice that it did not look much like mine. And I wished mine looked more like hers.

So, from her I learned about softer, more wide-open apertures, scrapping the flash, and thinking harder about composition. The Harbinger-of-spring above manifests this. Now, most of my plant work is between f/4 and f/7.1 and this image was made at the latter. The closest flowers are the focus point, and I do not care that the rest of the subject is not in sharp focus. The wide aperture melts the background but the dissected cauline (stem) leaves can still be seen.

f/6.3, ISO 200, 1/320, 70-200mm lens at 140 mm

Early Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum giganteum) has a bizarre appearance when it is emerging. Nearly all parts of the plant are an attractive purplish shade, and the flowers are already mature even as the foliage unfurls. Their bright yellow anthers provide the only punctuation point to the plant.

For this, I used my 70-200mm with a 25mm extension tube, at 140mm. The hollow tube allows for closer focusing and does not detract at all from image quality as there is not glass within it. As usual, I am in my ISO sweet spot - 200. For plants, I almost always operate between ISO 100 and 400, and normally between ISO 100-200. I want the cleanest possible files, and there is normally no need to use high ISO when shooting plants. I like the effect of the mini-telephoto 70-200, which really compresses the subject and obliterates the background. A busy background is normally not a desirable quality for botanical imagery, at least to me.

f/7.1, ISO 100, 1/40, 100mm macro lens

A White Trout Lily (Erythronium albidum), the earliest of our lilies to bloom. This is a diminutive plant, and to make effective captures more challenging the flowers dangle almost straight down. I generally would prefer to have my camera horizontal to the flower, and better yet, slightly below it. The bottom line is plant photographers will spend lots of time on the ground, on their subjects' plane.

I'm almost always working off a tripod, and my current favorite is the relatively inexpensive Oben CTT-1000, with their excellent ball head. It is made from carbon fiber, is flyweight, versatile in positioning, and allows me to get my camera nearly on the ground. Stabilizing the rig is vital, for reasons I will expound on under the next image.

f/5.6, ISO 250, 1/320, 100mm macro lens

White Trout Lily flowers are botanical will-o-the-wisps, appearing to float low over the forest leaf litter. To get this perspective, my camera was under the plant and shooting upwards, thanks to my mini-tripod.

A major reason why tripods are important in botanical photography is because slow shutter speeds are often used. Of the three major parameters - aperture, ISO, and shutter speed - the latter is least important. I want a low ISO to keep my images as clean (less noise) as possible. The aperture is a major driver as it dictates the look that I get of my subject and its environs. The shutter speed is merely whatever the aperture and ISO dictate it to be. While this trout lily flower was shot at a comparatively fast speed, the Harbinger-of-spring above was shot at 1/8 second! And the previous trout lily shot was made at 1/40 second.

No one will have much luck hand-holding a rig at such slow shutter speeds. The miss rate would skyrocket, and you likely would not get any sharp images. This is why wind is the plant photographer's enemy. As long as the subject is immobile, one can use very slow shutter speeds in tangent with very low ISO settings, no problem. Windy days? I'm not going to be shooting wildflowers.

f/16, ISO 200, 1/2 second, 100mm macro lens

The seldom noticed pistillate (female) flower of American Hazelnut (Corylus americana). It is truly elfin and thus overlooked. This was - for me - a rare case of using a tiny aperture, f/16 in this case. I did so because I wanted sharpness throughout the bizarre blossom. The bokeh (background quality) is creamy brown because there was nothing for probably 20 or more feet behind the subject. The brown tones are caused by a distant leaf-covered slope.

Note the shutter speed - one-half second! While the camera/lens was firmly stabilized on a tripod, there are additional steps to ensure a sharp image. I set my camera's shutter release to a 2-second delay so that my hands aren't even touching the rig when it fires (there is also a 10-second delay option but that's usually overkill). I also have the camera set so that I can just touch the back viewing screen with my finger, and it will instantly focus on that spot, then activate the shutter (2 seconds later). Complete stillness with the camera. Not all cameras (yet) have that touch screen option, but just about all DSLR or mirrorless cameras have the timer delay feature.

f/8, ISO 200, 1/30, 100mm macro lens

A lethargic group of Hepatica (Hepatica nobilis) flowers on a frosty morning. A few hours later, with significantly warmer temperatures, the flowers would be proudly upright and fully expanded. I stopped down a bit more than usual - to f/8 - for a bit more depth on this elfin flower forest. Focus was on the top right flower, which was closest to the lens. It's almost always best to focus on the nearest flower, as that is where the eyes of viewers of your image will likely first be drawn.

NOTE: I take the conservative position and lump the two hepatica "species" together under the available name Hepatica nobilis. If you split them, this would be the so-called Sharp-lobed Hepatica (H. acutiloba).

In my next post, I will share short sequences of two of Ohio's rarest and most beautiful lilies, with some thoughts on composition.

First spring wildflowers!

A capacity crowd of 300 people jams the barn where the annual Amish Bird Symposium takes place near Wheat Ridge, in Adams County, Ohio. Yesterday was the 17th version, and things are not slowing down. Roman Mast was the catalyst behind starting ABS, and I was at the inaugural one in 2004. While Roman, who always served as emcee - and a great one! - has moved to north-central Ohio, a wonderful organizing committee runs the show smoothly.

I've been to most of these, and was there yesterday to kick off the speakers with a talk about sparrows. They wisely don't pack the agenda - two talks in the morning, two in the afternoon. All of the talks were great, and the other covered migration, hummingbirds, and John Howard wrapped up with a look at Adams County's incredibly diverse flora and fauna through the seasons.

Photo courtesy Kathy McDonald

One of the best parts of the symposium is catching up with people that I don't get to see that often. Attendees come from all over the state, and you'll never know who you'll see. Here we have Bruce Miller (excellent bird photographer!), your narrator, Tim Colborn (president of the Ohio Ornithological Society), and legendary Jenny Richards, longtime naturalist at Shawnee State Park.

Speakers have always been gifted with a beautiful handmade wooden plaque. Normally they feature specialty birds of the region, such as blue grosbeak, chuck-will's-widow, and loggerhead shrike. I got a special one this year. Mine featured my favorite bug and inarguably the most spectacular insect in the solar system, the amazing Amorpha borer, Megacyllene decora! This rare beetle is a coleopteran specialty of this region and an animal I have long been smitten with. Read more about them HERE.

Not that the symposium wasn't fun, because it was, but I was really looking forward to stopping at a favorite spot on the way home. This stunning riparian corridor is lined with limestone cliffs, and the protected calcareous soils send wildflowers forth before they can be found in most other places. This truly Lilliputian parsley is the aptly named harbinger-of-spring, Erigenia bulbosa, and it was near peak bloom yesterday. Some plants are so small they barely protrude beyond the leaf litter.

I had figured on a quick half an hour here, but that stretched to two hours. I've not been able to get afield much at all of late, and it was glorious reveling in the onset of spring and its first wildflowers on a crisp blue sky early March day.

My primary target was our smallest and earliest trillium, the snow trillium, Trillium nivale. Paying homage to these elfin lilies is a near annual rite of spring for me, and the sheer number of trillia at this site can be breathtaking. They were just coming on yesterday, and if it's a big year, several thousand plants could be in flower here later.

As the afternoon sun waned, I decided my time of botanical communion was up and it was time to hit the road for Columbus. Walking out of the woods, I glanced up the slope and saw that the sun was streaking the forest floor with golden strips of light. I raced up to see if I could find an open trillium lit by the sun's rays, and Bingo! I got my plant just before the massive star dipped below the horizon. A great ending to a wonderful day.

PHOTO NOTES: I went off the photographic reservation on most of these images. I was in an experimental mood, and shot all but the last of the plant images with Canon's beautifully bizarre but utterly superb 200mm f/2 lens, with a 25mm extension tube. If you saw a recent post that I made about shooting lambs, HERE, that was the lens that I used. People and other larger animals, and sometimes tight landscape shots, would be this lens' typical uses for me. But, coupled with an extension tube to allow it to focus much more closely and the 200 turns out to be an excellent botanical lens. The lens is a tank, and a tripod is essential for this work.

The last image was shot with Canon's ultra-wide angle 16-35mm f.2.8 II lens, handheld and laying on the ground for perspective. Wide-angles, which often focus very closely as this one does, can be great tools for casting your subject plant in a broader light and putting it in a habitat context.

Two ducks, gaudily beautiful

Last Saturday was the 13th annual Amish Bird Symposium in Adams County. As former co-organizer Roman Mast always joked: "What's an Amish Bird?"

I was able to make the scene, and hear several great talks. Several hundred birders attend, and the main attraction is great speakers. This year's cast featured Alexandra Forsythe, Mark Garland, Eric Ellis, and a triumvirate of great wildlife artists, DeVere Burt, John Agnew, and John Ruthven. The symposium is always in March. Put it on your calendar for next year.

The lure of signs of spring was strong for this winter-weary flatlander, so I stayed down there overnight and headed afield the following day.

While the weather was cold and rainy at times, there's no denying the first wildflowers their blooms. This is the tiny Harbinger-of-spring, Erigenia bulbosa, and it was coming on in force. I made this image when the temperature was 37 F. The little parsleys were pushing through the leaf litter in good numbers. Several other species of native wildflowers were also in bloom in the Ohio River counties. As were nonnative daffodils (which, quite sadly, would be recognized by FAR more people than gorgeous native flora like this Harbinger-of-spring).

As I made my way back north on State Route 104, which borders the mighty Scioto River, I noticed a small pack of Hooded Mergansers in a slackwater oxbow of the river. I wheeled back, found a good hiding hole, and waited for the birds to forget about my presence. They did, and eventually drifted near enough for some passable images.

A drake Hooded Merganser with hormones coursing through its body and hens to impress is a sight to behold. They flare that elegant black-trimmed white crest, which apparently impresses the ladies. Half a dozen drakes were strutting their stuff.

This spot turned out to be a real honey hole. I could see incoming fowl flying up the river long before they saw me, and thus was ready with the camera. As you may know, big rivers are essentially highways for birds, and all manner of species navigate along them. In short order I saw several species of ducks, Belted Kingfisher, two Bald Eagles, and more. A group of Green-winged Teal dropped into the oxbow, the males' musical albeit slightly raspy piping notes much reminiscent of spring peeper frogs.

At one point I heard the high-pitched squeals of a female Wood Duck, and glanced over to see this trio spring from the flooded bottomland woods. I trained my big lens on the fast-moving birds, and flubbed most shots. But this one is a keeper. The female is bookended by attentive drakes, both of whom are no doubt vying for her attention.

Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers look a lot alike in flight, if just seen as silhouettes. Both species are cavity-nesters with long tails, and the tail extends behind the wings about as far as the head and neck on the other side. But Wood Ducks typically hold their head and neck up, above parallel, and thus look somewhat wary and watchful in flight. Hooded Mergansers hold the head at or below parallel, and that habit coupled with their somewhat faster flight gives the birds more of a look of speedy purposefulness.

This image was grabbed with Canon's amazing 7D Mark II. If you're looking for a great bird camera, check into one of these. It was connected to the 500mm f/4 II lens with a 1.4x extender sandwiched between, and the whole rig was mounted on a tripod. Settings were f/6.3, ISO 500, 1/2000. The exposure compensation was +1.3 stops. Without exposing to the right, the birds would have come out looking like dark silhouettes. Upping the exposure also whitens the sky, which lends somewhat of a painterly feeling to the image.