The Quiet Picture

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The calypso orchid is very rare and a protected species that likes mossy conifer forests. We have a location where this flower grows a few miles from where I live but I only found the place recently, and the whole experience of seeing the orchid was special enough, even if I couldn’t have taken any pictures!

Composition was almost automatic, use an angle where the lip of the flower is between the upper petals and focus on the raindrop in the upper left 3rd, letting the other petals to balance the frame. Because I was shooting downwards and this flower is not very tall, I had to keep a large aperture to handle the background. I like shallow DOF though and I think that it helps to draw focus on the drops.

I used a golden reflector to light up the underside of the flower. The lower lip is more pronounced when lit and it also brings a bit more colour to the image, changing the mood to something a bit “happier” than the dark un-reflected versions. Otherwise I had a bit of a struggle with the while balance, so I can only hope that I matched the true colour of the flower here.

What I don’t entirely like is the middle petal which curves up towards the camera, it’s seriously OOF and only shows as a blob. I don’t find it too distracting to spoil the image, but there it is anyway… I was not going to touch the flower to change anything! Another possible distraction is what looks like a tiny grain of pollen on the rightmost petal, but I chose not to clone it off.

All in all, I’m very happy with this image. It fulfills my usual criteria of being simple and balanced without (major!) distractions, while being something different with what the hopefully unusual angle. In my eye, it also shows the fragile beauty of this rare orchid. There is always a risk that an image that excites you at first will not stand the test of time, but the calypso orchid is so special that I will keep coming back to this for years to come. Maybe the subject itself has a bigger impact on me than my interpretation of it, so I am curious to hear how other people see this!

The way I figured it, I would only have one opportunity to get this right. If I wanted a keeper image of the calypso orchid, it had to be today - the flowers were starting to get past their prime. It was another dark and overcast day with a spot of rain, but that only made the flowers that much sweeter. I was able to go down to ISO 200 for a few shots but mostly I kept at 400, not my preferred ISO but I made an exception for this rare orchid and rare occasion. In this image, I used a reflector to light up the underside of the flower.

I am still buzzing about having seen the calypso orchid. I don’t have words to express how special I think it is!

Something very special happened today. I was contacted by a person who asked if I’d be interested in photographing the fairy slipper, or calypso orchid (Calypso bulbosa). Say what?! This orchid is very rare and I had known that it was borderline possible that there was one place nearby where they might be growing, but my intel was years old and I was sure that they’d be gone by now. This is the southernmost location for the flower in Sweden, but it doesn’t really get common anywhere in this country. Anyway, suffice it to say that I was indeed interested in seeing this flower. I mean, nevermind photography, just to see it. Imagine my amazement at seeing these flowers in surprisingly big numbers, there on the forest floor. This has got to be the most exciting flora encounter in my history as a flower photographer (or, ever)! It was late evening, overcast weather and dark forest so I was shooting at ISO 1600, cue lots of noise in the image. I don’t care. These could be the worst photographs I’ve ever taken. It doesn’t matter - I got to see the calypso orchid. It doesn’t get better than this!

The mystery flower in the previous post has been de-mystified. It’s a double flowered marsh marigold, Caltha palustris ‘Multiplex’. I have a colleague who is a garden enthusiast and she immediately pegged it as a marsh marigold and found me a link to a site with pictures of this flower. I’m rather pleased with myself, because initially when I saw the flower I thought it might be related to the marsh marigold, but both Den nya nordiska floran and Den virtuella floran only listed one species in the Caltha genus so I dismissed my hunch.

Thank you everyone who tried to help me with the ID! Not easy with a partial close-up shot…

Amazing. I have waited and waited… and now it’s finally here. The flower season. In the past weeks I’ve gotten in the occasional flower shot, but the floodgates really opened today. I’ve been walking around with camera in hand most of the day, and finished with a car ride to the lake and got my first landscape shot since the winter. In floral terms, I’ve shot marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), dwarf marsh violet (Viola epipsila), wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella), wood forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica), wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa), apple flower, wild pansy (Viola tricolor) and then a yellow flower I haven’t been able to ID yet (help appreciated, see below). And I also got shots of a daffodil but I deleted them, and a backlit maple leaf which I didn’t delete, bringing the total of today’s species to ten. If this doesn’t look like summer, then I don’t know what!

I had this idea for wood anemone to shoot straight from above and frame the flower in the middle, with the leaves forming an OOF triangle in the BG. I tried it last week but unfortunately I only shot the flower in sunlight and found afterwards that the shadows from the upcurved petals spoiled the image. But luckily, the wood anemone were still blooming so I had another chance and made sure to get a shaded image to even out the exposure. In this image, I’ve used the vignetting tool in Lightroom to darken the corners (the top left corner was bothering me a little) and I’m quite happy about the result - couldn’t really get much closer to my pre-visualisation.

This is my mystery flower. It was growing right next to marsh marigold on the shore of a small pond, which is a sort of extension of the abandoned garden I blogged about a while ago. It has big leaves, reminded me of coltsfoot leaves, almost round with slightly serrated edges. I have a picture of the leaves and the full flower if needed.

Oh what to do tomorrow. I know a spot where the lily of the valley have already started blooming (!) and common and heath dog violets are forming blue pillows on the forest floor. There are cowslip on every lawn (except mine) but I have a secured a visit to someone’s garden to shoot them, only it will take a few days until they are fully grown. I really fancy taking a shot at marsh violets, which will be tricky because they are so small and just disappear in the grass while achieving sufficient DOF is a challenge of its own. And that unidentified flower will get some morning sun… and I want to perfect my backlit maple leaf shot… and I definitely need some good pictures of the forget-me-nots. Looks like another busy day tomorrow!

Every spring when I see blueberry flowers I think that I should photograph them. Every year I have not done it. Until now - I have these things growing 5 metres from my house, no excuses! Not even the high winds deterred me, I just made use of my new Wimberley Plamp to steady the stem and a golden reflector to add some frontlight to the sidelit flowers. And since there were two flowers, I used the Plamp to angle the flowers so that I got them parallel to the sensor. Looks like I got one more gadget I just absolutely have to have in my bag… it’s getting heavy!

A day off, and not wasted. That’s gotta count for something… My favourite wood anemone patch is best photographed in the morning, so I set down to shoot the flowers. Since the place is shaded for most of the day, the wood anemone are blooming later than elsewhere and there were plenty of buds and even tiny leaves indicating that the wood anemone season would continue for quite some time. Just as well, because there isn’t much else for me to shoot. Some violets are already in bloom though and I was surprised to see small lily of the valley buds in a sunny spot, but mostly, it feels like I’m still in waiting mode. Flowers, oh flowers, how I miss you…

When I started with photography, my pictures were crap. I did my best to improve them on the computer, using all sorts of filters to try and save them. I was quite happy with the results, but in retrospect, crap in crap out. When I finally learned to create decent images in camera, I ditched all those funky filters and now I’ve become something of a purist - the picture just simply has to work in the camera, otherwise it’s a lemon. The only editing I allow myself is the usual with levels/curves and USM, plus a little bit of cloning or healing tool to remove some spots, but usually no more.

But what is a rule worth if you can’t make exceptions to it? I really liked the glory-of-the-snow image in the previous post, if not for the ugly strand of OOF grass in the background that I failed to notice during the shoot. I figured that it should be easy to fix it so I used the magic wand to separate the left side of the background from the flower and applied a generous dose of gaussian blur to it and Bob’s your uncle - I think the image works now!

I still have a problem though. I failed in my original mission, which was to create the final product in the camera. I don’t mind it if other photographers edit their pictures, I always think that as long as the finished product is good and the photographer admits the edits, then why not? Why can’t I allow the same liberty for myself? Why do I keep thinking that the end does not justify the means?

On Tuesday I discovered some glory-of-the-snow flowers (Scilla forbesii) in Loos. The property where they grew looked empty, so I made some enquiries and found out that the owner lives in Stockholm and rarely visits. The owner’s father was the previous occupant and he was an avid gardener with carefully maintained flowerbeds and a variety of flowers. But that was 20 years ago and the garden is now growing wild, with butterbur spreading out of control, scattered daffodils, grape hyacinths, glory-of-the-snow and siberian squills, and wood anemone making headway among the rampant butterbur. What made all of this so special for me was that I had never even seen the glory-of-the-snow and grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) before. In fact, initially when I was looking at it, I thought that the grape hyacinth was a bud form of the glory-of-the-snow. The second look revealed my mistake…

So you can imagine I was having a great time photographing them all. I will be back, hopefully in the morning light on Saturday or Sunday. It will be too late for the scillas but the grape hyacints and daffodils have only started blooming.

Did I mention that this wild garden is situated next to the main thoroughfare in Loos? I seem to be doing a lot more public appearances now than I usually do in a year…

The glory-of-the-snow was photographed with the camera down in the grass, pointing slightly up to the flower. The angle finder is proving to be a real life-saver, it would be impossible to shoot from this angle without it. There was a lot of dry grass around and I thought I was avoiding it by using this upward angle, but nix - look at the OOF band in the background, I didn’t see it in DOF preview either. Does it spoil the image?

The daffodil is a new composition for me, getting really close with the 100mm lens and filling the frame with the yellow. The petals caught a little bit of the diffused sunlight and I’m quite happy with the result, actually. I can hardly wait for the summer!

April was… well, April. We had a couple of really warm spells but also some typical April weather with a little bit of snowfall. Otherwise it was the month when all the snow disappeared, I now have but a small pile in a shaded trench behind the house. It was also a month with big winds, luckily no damage to houses and people but the forest has taken a beating. I have quite a few wind felled pines just some 50-100 metres from the house. They have partly cut the forest there so there’s fewer trees to stand against the force of the wind and the few remaining trees are obviously having a hard time now.

Signs of spring:

• 1st of April: coltsfoot in full bloom
• 6th: hepatica in bloom
• 13th: my snow meter reached 0 cm
• 14th: butterflies
• 15th: leaf buds
• 16th: daphne in bloom
• 23rd: the first rainbow of the year
• 25th: alpine penny-cress in full bloom
• 26th: pied wag-tail, the big lakes (Dåasen & Loossjön) 100% free of ice
• 27th: the trees are starting to look green

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