The Quiet Picture

Every day there’s more crocuses coming up under my kitchen window. Today I had five of them in bloom, but I can see three new buds already. It’s too bad that my crocus patch is shaded in the evening so the only chance I have of seeing them open is during the weekend, so I was happy about the sunny morning today because it gave me the opportunity that I was waiting for!

I checked out the hepatica again to see if any of the buds I saw yesterday would be open already, and a couple of them were. So the hepatica are now officially in bloom, which is roughly the same time as last year.

I came to realise that it’s worth taking the same pictures of the same flowers year after year, after all. I decided a couple of years ago that I wouldn’t do it but the budding botanist (pun intended) in me appreciates the documentary value of the pictures. It works if you write down when this or that flower was in bloom, but it’s much better to have a picture of it in the catalogue!

Finally, finally, finally! Time for my best friend, the macro lens. My crocuses are not in full bloom yet, but I know that the coltsfoot will have dotted the roadside yellow in that warm spot that is always the first one to melt in Loos. I was hoping to see other signs of spring, anything at all that I could feed to the macro lens, but it is a bit early still. The snow has melted in many south facing spots now but the only place where I saw anything new growing was this coltsfoot patch. But there was a surprise waiting for me – I found hepatica buds! I’ve always known that there’s hepatica here, but normally I only see them later on when they’re in full bloom because they grow on the other side of the ditch and this was the first time I jumped over because I wanted to shoot the coltsfoot.

Oh boy! It was only when I was looking at the yellow filling up the viewfinder that I realised how much I’ve missed the macro lens. And flowers!

The marsh marigold are starting to bloom, but my problem was much the same as I faced with the wood anemone – what I could I do with them that I haven’t already done? I didn’t want to take the same pictures all over again. Then I thought of the leaves, I noticed last week how pretty the leaves are and how they cradle the buds so I wanted to find a way to make the leaves an important part of the picture, and not just an incidental detail. It’s easier said than done, because by the time the flower is mature enough to be in full bloom, that cradle effect is long gone and insects will have taken their toll on the aesthetics. I finally settled with this flower which had just opened and by focusing as close as I could without clipping the petals I was able to fill the background with the leaves.

This marsh marigold place of mine, it will be provide me with plenty of new opportunities to explore the idea because there were buds everywhere. It’s good for other flowers as well, to start with there’s the daphne that by now is of course way over bloom, and I could see marsh and dwarf marsh violets coming up. I also saw leaves of heath spotted orchids already, and then more herb paris than I’ve ever seen in one place. The biggest problem is that by July, absolutely everything is growing so wild that you’re wading knee deep in a sea of green so good luck with finding a clean background… But I just think that it’s lovely have such a place so close to home, it really is only a few hundred meters down the road from me.

I wanted to get back to my semi-high key wood anemones from Sunday. I liked the composition in this one with the foreground flower asymmetrically mirrored in the oof flower on the right (if it’s possible to “asymmetrically mirror” anything?), plus the open white space above. In Lightroom, I muted the colour in the leaves by increasing brightness (I didn’t want to desaturate because it just adds grey and it didn’t work in my eye), and then used a brush to selectively increase and decrease clarity. Some cloning and healing was also involved in the process because there were some stray petals sticking into the frame which I thought distracted too much, and the whole thing was finished off with a white vignette. A whole lot more post-processing than I normally do, but I guess it’s the joy of the flower season that inspired me!

I must say that I’m happy with the result, with reservation for the degree of whiteness in the background, because strictly speaking, it’s not white – it’s light grey, with perhaps a dose of yellow in the form of oof flowers. However, if I were to make it white then the main flower would be totally lost, so keeping the grey helps to lift the topmost petals. It really comes down to presentation; this picture should never be shown against a white background, nor should be it mounted with a white frame, LOL! I hope that the Lightbox plugin works for you so the picture opens in the dark frame… the default white browser window rarely does any favours to any picture, for that matter.

I’ve got quite a few wood anemone pictures, some of them I’m even happy with. So at first I didn’t know what to do with the flowers because I didn’t want to repeat what I already had in the catalogue, but then I came up with the idea of trying high key. I have a portable light tent that I got last year, I thought it would be good at taming harsh light and wind. It turned out that it doesn’t really do anything to the wind, and it’s too awkward to carry around for any longer hikes so the light tent didn’t see much action last year. But now that I had this high key idea, I needed a white background and the light tent was suddenly looking a lot better. I don’t normally like white backgrounds and it definitely doesn’t work with most natural subjects, but I’m reasonably satisfied with the results. The flower almost disappears against the bg, so you need to work with the greens to help carry the composition. But the light tent does a good job at eliminating shadows so the picture isn’t too contrasty, which would spoil the whole thing. I think I need some time to digest the pictures to find out if I prefer less or more green (I’ve got plenty of versions), but I hope you get the idea from this one.

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One of the mandarin ducks is back at the pond. So I figured, they came across a mandarin girl and this duck lost, LOL!

All April I kept complaining how I don’t like spring (or April, anyway). Now that we’re in the 2nd half of May, things are definitely starting to look better. And by things, I mean everything green and all the other colours! Today’s catch was still mostly just buds, but I’ll happily photograph them as well. Give them another week, you bet I’ll be there with the camera again.

In the morning I checked out the duck pond and was disappointed to find it empty. An elderly couple having a picknic breakfast at the table (yes, there are tables by the pond, it’s not a wild place in any stretch of the word) but not even a feather of a mandarin duck. Dare I hope that they (the ducks, not the elderly couple) will be back? Photographers talk about “eye candy” and if the mandarins don’t qualify as such, then I don’t know what!

The trees are starting to take on a lovely bright green colour but it’s a bit hard to take the advantage of it right now because it’s been really windy today. In the morning before it got too bad I was able to get some macro work done, otherwise the day was more suitable for just walking around and checking the status of various wildflowers. I was surprised to see the hepatica still in bloom, and delighted to find common dog violets. The wood anemone are in full bloom in some places, but only budding in my favourite wood anemone spot which is somewhat shaded so the snow melts late. Even the blueberry is starting to flower in sunny places, which I found a tad optimistic… I hope we don’t get any frost nights in May like last year.

And then there’s this pair of colourful ducks in the small pond across the fire station. I saw them there last week and I was sure they were just passing, but today I saw them again. I’ll almost have to try to photograph them tomorrow, although I’m not looking forward to it – the place is very exposed. But the ID bothers me and I can only confirm it if I get them on picture. I’m no ornithologist despite the pile of bird books on the shelf!

I don’t have a lot of margins in my picture-a-day project. Zero margins, actually. The day dawned bright and sunny, but I knew that rain was forecast in the afternoon so I went for a walk even though I could see the dark clouds already looming in the horizon. I thought I could photograph the cowslip I’ve been eyeing for a few days now, but I had been a bit too optimistic about it and it still wasn’t in full bloom. I was momentarily stumped, but then I remembered that the wood anemone had bounced back from the snow so I headed to my favourite wood anemone spot, only to be disappointed again. They were all more or less closed and drooping and the prettiest ones had the ugliest backgrounds. But once again, already on my way out, I saw this pair of flowers facing each other. Voilà!

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!