The Quiet Picture

I have discontinued my Photo tips series. Instead of trying to make everyone a better photographer (hah!), I just stopped visiting Fotosidan. Who needs the aggravation.I created a list of the Fleur du jour entries instead. Someone else’s turn to get aggravated… LOL!

Platanthera bifolia ssp. latiflora

• English: Lesser Butterfly-Orchid
• Swedish: Skosgnattviol
• Finnish: Valkolehdokki

Ok folks, this is where it gets really exciting! This is the first time I’ve ever seen a lesser butterfly-orchid. I went out just to make an inventory of the flowers I have in the forest behind my house, when I came across this one. I very nearly ran back home to grab the camera - just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I’ve learned not to trust that anything will stay put overnight so if I want a picture, there’s no time like present! It was the only one of its kind; I checked the vicinity of this flower and all I found was two dried stems from last year and some leaves, but I can’t tell if someone has nipped the flower from them or if the flower hasn’t started to grow yet.The part where it gets really exciting (besides the thrill of finding something new) is that this subspecies Platanthera bifolia ssp. latiflora of the lesser butterfly-orchid has only recently been classified on its own and it’s not very widely documented yet; not even the distribution is exactly known, but apparently it’s not very rare anyway. Thus it’s possible that the English name is not really lesser butterfly-orchid, but I couldn’t confirm this. It does seem like the same name is used for all of the Plantanthera bifolia sub-species and the same thing applies for the Finnish name, but in Swedish it’s different.

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Image specs: ISO 400, f4, 1/60, Canon 300mm f4L, 21mm ext. tube. It was dark in the forest so the image is dark-ish… and to be honest, it’s not as sharp as I would like it to be but I liked it otherwise. I have some sharper images but they are from a different (=boring) angle.

My mystery orchid has been identified - it’s a Lapland marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza lapponica).

One benefit with being tv-less is that I have more time to do those things I always otherwise put off. Like updating minnak.net. I have added some new pictures now, most of them are already familiar from the blog but there are some never-before-seen images as well, for example an Ortonised version of the fern photo I posted in June. Have a look!I have also added some pictures on loosfoto.se.

Dactylorhiza incarnata cruenta

• English: Early Marsh Orchid
• Swedish: Blodnycklar
• Finnish: Punakämmekkä

This is why I drive to the mountains to hunt flowers. To find species that we don’t get around here.. like the early marsh orchid. I have visited the mountains regularly since I moved to Sweden, but I didn’t discover the early marsh orchid until last year, and even then it was pointed out to me. Now I can recognise it with one hand tied behind my back. The other hand I need for turning the leaf to see if it has a dark underside!The funny thing is that I also seem to find some species in the mountains that I can’t find here, even though the distribution map shows that they should grow here. The early marsh orchid is however not one of them, as plentiful as it seems to be in the Härjedalsfjällen region. Or maybe you just need to know where to look…

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Image specs: ISO 100, f5.00, 1/320, Canon 300mm f4L w/ 21mm ext. tube

When I woke up, the sky looked ominous, but it wasn’t raining yet. We drove to Rockvallen because we knew that we would find some orchids there while not straying far from the car in case it would start raining. I had an absolute blast shooting different flowers, and by the time it started raining, I was also already done with the flowers. It didn’t look like it would keep raining all day though, so we headed to Mittåkläppen and Djupdalsvallen. Since it was still raining, we had waffles. Wise from my waffle overdose the last time, I only had one… The rain let out for a bit to do some shooting, but after a few sunny rays the clouds came back and the rain started again. We decided to break off the shoot and wait until the evening to see if there was any change in the weather.I was about to drive out, when I thought that I might as well have a closer look at the river while I was out there. I found some marshland and discovered more of the same orchids we had seen before. But suddenly I struck gold - orchids I had never seen before! It was still raining, so I rushed back to car and got the 100mm macro with StormJacket pulled over it to allow me to shoot in the rain. By the time I was back to the Pseudorchis albida straminea, the rain had stopped and instead I got plagued by the insects. I endured them until I figured that I had my keeper image, and left.

For the evening shoot, we were determined to get away from the mozzies and gnats and the best place for that is above the treeline. As we started driving towards Flatruet, the rain started as well. By the time we reached the Ånnfjället picknic site, it wasn’t raining on us anymore. It was raining elsewhere though, and we got a nice rainbow to shoot. But the tiny little gnats really were driving us crazy… there were so many that when I zippered up the Bugshirt hood, I got gnats inside the jacket. I didn’t particularly enjoy that.

Once we got above the treeline, we found another rainbow. By now the gnats were gone and we were only pestered by mosquitos, and even they seemed to be only half interested in us. When the rainbow disappeared, we continued our way to the top of Flatruet. It’s a popular place for camper vans and this being July, it was fairly crowded so we drove to the old house a few hundred meters towards Ljungdalen. I thought that the it would make a nice subject, being lit by the evening sun as it was, but after a couple of shots I decided that it wasn’t that good after all and instead concentrated on the rainbow I had spotted. It vanished quickly so I moved to another location and discovered yet one more rainbow to my great delight. I shot it, and decided that I should try to find a better foreground. So I moved a little, shot it again, and decided that there would be yet some better foreground to be achieved, if the rainbow just please would stay there… so I moved, took the shot, but I still wasn’t all happy so I moved once more, and now I finally got down to business. The rainbow was very obliging!

All in all, I am very happy with today’s crop. Yesterday was a bit of a downer because of all the rain, but looking at today’s images, the rain didn’t spoil anything. On the contrary - I would have missed all those beautiful rainbows, if the weather hadn’t been as changing as it was!

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From the “duh” department: Polarizers are no good with rainbows. I wanted to cut the glare from the foreground lake surface and attached a polarizer. As I turned it, all the colours of the rainbow disappeared… literally! I put the filter back in the bag.

Time for another short mountain break. I just can’t give up on those orchids, and now it should be the high season for them. The summer is putting on the heat and the mosquitos, gnats and other flying nuisances are out in their force so you don’t really get a moment’s peace to when you stop to photograph, but everything can be endured for those precious pictures.The world of orchids is exciting for sure. Determining the species is not nearly as easy as it flower ID is in general (not that flower ID in general is easy for me). There are so many subspecies that many of them are not listed in my flora bible, which results in different looking orchids being classed as one and the same in my catalogue. Anyway, as soon as I find an orchid which is NOT the most common form of Dactylorhiza maculata, I’m happy!

Take this one for example. I honestly can’t find a confirmed ID for it. It has spots on the leaves, but not on the underside - that makes it a heath spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza maculata). The individual blooms on the other hand are most definitely not that - they resemble the early marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza incarnata). But Dactylorhiza incarnata doesn’t have any spots on the leaves - unless it’s a Dactylorhiza incarnata cruenta, in which case it has spots on both sides of the leaves… I’m confused! We always found this orchid growing in the same places as Gymnadenia conopsea and Dactylorhiza incarnata cruenta, and Dactylorhiza maculata of course.

The orchid hunt goes on…

I took my broken tv to the recycling centre for disposal, so I am now officially and definitely tv-less. It’s funny how the tube has dominated my living room - not just when turned on, but also when turned off. The room seems bigger now that the tv is gone.

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Just read in the paper that this will be a record year for blueberries. Last year I was amazed… it seemed as if the forest floor was blue with blueberries. Apparently, now it’s going to up to twice as much. Can’t wait to see!

Just to show that I do sometimes persevere and follow up on my ideas, I finally took the shot of the Lo(o)s Monument I talked about in June.

I underexposed generously in order to get a proper silhouette and not to wash out the sky. I also only let the edge of the sun to show up behind the monument, this to make sure that I would get a nice star effect without flares all over the place. And would you believe, it eliminated all the flare - I never thought it would be possible! The other images where I had let in a bit more light and sun had varying degrees of flare.That’s one more subject I can check off from my Los subject list (for the loosfoto.se project). Nice.

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In case you’re wondering why I’m spelling Los and Loos (and Lo(o)s), it’s because both spelling variants exist. The official spelling is with one o, but the local folks prefer two. I would also rather use two o’s, but it gets a bit confusing if you have any background in the English language. Fancy living in Toilets?

So you know how I always go on about the joys of discovering new detail when doing close-up photography? Well, proof is in the pudding.

Look at the insert. Doesn’t that look just like some pre-historic fish? I didn’t notice the little “eye” when I was taking this picture. In fact, I had trouble noticing anything at all but just relied on auto-focus. It was a mosquito hell and I was wearing a mosquito net, so I was only able to judge the composition but not much more. Anyway, when I downloaded the pictures to my computer and had a closer look, I immediately saw the flower in a whole different way. The common cow-wheat (Melampyrum pratense) will never be common to me again…