The Quiet Picture

Random rants and occasional photographs
Archive for June 23rd, 2007

One-flowered wintergreen

June 23rd, 2007 | Category: flower, wintergreen
If I thought that yesterday was windy, then today was hopeless. All I could do was to scout, so I was all the more happier when I discovered some long-lost flowers nearby. I was actually looking for the round-leaved wintergreens (Pyrola rotundifolia) and found one (count them, o-n-e) where they were plentiful last year. At least it wasn’t withering like the ones I found last summer… But then when I least expected it, I came across a patch of one-flowered wintergreens (Moneses uniflora) and this was truly a joy, because I haven’t seen any of these either in the spot where I discovered them last year (when they were already withering). I had almost given up shooting this tiny flower at all, but it looks like the forest will continue to surprise me if only I take the trouble to keep looking.
Canon 100mm f2.8 macro, ISO 200, f3.5, 1/40
Since the flowers were growing in a small depression in the forest, protected by trees, the wind wasn’t too bad and I decided to endure the mosquitoes that seemed to have flocked to this same sheltered spot. Photographing the one-flowered wintergreens is a lot like shooting cranberry flowers, minus the light!
Canon 100mm f2.8 macro, ISO 400, f3.5, 1/60
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Gardening your subject

June 23rd, 2007 | Category: editing, personal, photography
There’s an interesting discussion over at NPN about “fixing” your subject, i.e. manipulation before pressing the shutter (as opposed to manipulation in post-processing). If any manipulation needs to be done, I prefer to do mine before I take the picture. I just like the idea of getting it right in the camera. But the dilemma is that if you love nature so much, why are you willing to sacrifice some plants for the benefit of your selfish pursuit? My take on the issue is that I am already damaging the plants just by being there. Say for example last night’s photo session with the lesser butterfly orchids. There was some tall grass creating distractions, so I carefully pulled out the grass until the subject was free. Then I set up the tripod in the middle of the forest undergrowth and kneeled down to look at the viewfinder. Just simply by doing that, I was also destroying grass and other plants (mind you, no orchids!). So how is it different that I pull out distractions around my subject, than trampling down grass while shooting? Goodness knows how many plants I kill just by walking in the forest. 

My guiding light whenever I need to do some gardening around my subject is that the subject itself is holy. If the subject is a common flower that grows plentiful, then I might use the plamp to bend it a little to suit my composition. The rarer the subject, the holier it is. When I was shooting the calypso orchids in May, I made sure not to even touch the flowers!

From the nature point of view, I think it would be almost hypocritical to condemn the gardening you do for your subject because one way or another, you will end up destroying something. The only question that remains is more photographic - whether you find it morally acceptable to manipulate your pictures at all. And that’s a totally different discussion so let’s leave it for some other time!

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