Canon 1D Mk III, 180mm f3.5 Macro, f5.6, 1/1000th, iso 200
Out here in California, we still have our state flower blooming, the California Golden Poppy, which is a wildflower. It is often found with Lupine, the purple flower you see here.
Last weekend the wife and I went on an "Art Tour" with artists of various media showing their wares out of their home studios. I'm always anxious to see photographers that I already know, and meet new ones. One of our excellent local photographers is Larry Brenden (www.larrybrenden.com) who recently made a trip to southern Utah, and he really nailed some fabulous southwest images.
But anyway, leaving the home of a new photographer, I spotted the scene above. One of the problems with poppy shots is you often have plain old weeds messing up your scene. Here I found a plethora of rich purple lupine, and lo! I could achieve a nice backlighting effect without even getting off the pavement. You can't beat that. (Plus other photogs will beat you if you trample the wildflowers).
I had brought the 180mm macro that day. I'm so glad I did. While I love my workhorse 70-200 F4L, it just does not compare to this lens. I'm loving my fixed lenses (meaning they don't zoom, they have one focal length). This is a huge macro lens, and does it perform. The above image just has the tiniest amount of "vibrance" added in lightroom. Normally you would do quite a bit more processing to achieve this rich and glorious look.
There are a lot of poppy shots out there, and I tried to create something that wasn't just another snapshot. What appealed to me about this point of view (I was sitting down to get this vantage point) was the perfectness of the flower and stem - no damage, and that it was nicely set off from the background, and in fact framed by out of focus lupine.
Click on the continue link and I'll show you how to make two photographs from one.
When I zoomed in on the computer to see just how luminous the back lit poppy was, I immediately said "hey, there's another version of this image right here!" I like this close up view very much, perhaps better than the "in situ" version.
There is almost always some wind in the afternoons now, thus the high shutter speed of 1/1000th to freeze the scene. That gorgeous background is brought to you by the 180mm Macro!
Let me know what you think of these images. Which is your favorite and why?
