Bee on a Tattered Heliopsis Flower

I have been doing a lot of macro work lately, mostly studying my favorite summer garden flowers: oxeye (aka heliopsis).

The oxeye blossom has an interesting life-cycle, that may be the subject of a future post. In the following image, I found a blossom near the end of its lifespan: the petals are coming apart and the whole appearance of the flower is ... tattered.

Still, there was apparently enough pollen and nectar left in the center to make it interesting enough for bees to come visiting.



Because there was a slight wind causing the blossom to sway on its long stalk and because the bees where buzzing about, I decided to shoot hand-held, not from a tripod. Despite the bright afternoon sun, I needed some additional flash in order to get the short exposure time required to eliminate motion blur.

So there I was holding the camera in my left hand and a speedlite attached via a short cord in the other hand ... No idea what the neighbors where thinking, but then, they should be used to me by now. :-)

I think I will get a flash bracket real soon now.
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Pink Anemone XXV

About three quarters of a year after Anemone against the Light I have created another image of a pink anemone flower, this time lit from the front.

Anemone XXV

The flower was growing in the shade of a hedge, so a speedlight to camera left provided additional light. I used a reflector to camera right to soften up the shadows.

Decaying Beauty and Lavender Rose

I've been quite busy lately, fortunately not too busy to test the wonderful Canon EF 100/2.8L USM Macro lens. We've had a lot of rain so the garden is not offering quite its usual abundance of flowers, but I've managed to get a few passable pictures:

Decaying Beauty

and

Lavender Rose

Both are roses, of course, the first being well past its prime, with the petals all wilted and gone. It was taken in available light using just a tripod for support.

The second is a fresh rose with lavender. I place both in a small vase, hung up a black cloth for the background, and used two speedlights for lighting. The first is to camera right, the second is to camera left, behind the flower.

Fireshow

Sanja Vatra asked me to take some pictures of her fire show during the Uferlos Festival last week. I was more than happy to oblige.

The weather was horrible, it was raining cats and dogs. Despite this, a nice crowd gathered to see a great show.



In order to get the fire swirling and some of the background, I dragged the shutter at 1/3s. The auto-focus of the Canon 5D decidedly did not feel up to the task, so I used f/8 for a good depth-of field and focused manually. These choices left me to use ISO 400 in order to expose the fire right.

I then fired the flash on ETTL with -1EV compensation to Sanja properly. Judging by the recycle time, the flash was firing full pop.

Looking at the pictures on the camera LCD after the show, I thought the whole effort was wasted. After I got home, warm, and dry, I had another look on the computer and felt much better. :)

Have a look at my Flickr! photostream for some more pictures.

Bleeding Heart Flowers

The windflowers in the last post are wilting away, unfortunately before I had a chance to re-visit them. Instead, the bleeding heart flowers are in full bloom - such is the cycle of life.

The bleeding heart, also known as Venus's car, Dutchman's trousers, lyre flower or by their latin name lamprocapnos spectabilis is originally from Korea and north and western China, but it seems to do very well in almost any temperate climate, so it is a very popular garden plant.

We simply let it grow and cut the wilted stalks short in the fall and they come back year after year.



In order to take the photo, I mounted the camera on a tripod and used an insane amount of extension (over 50 mm for a 70-200 mm lens). Despite an aperture of f/16, the depth of field is extremely shallow, about 2-3 mm in my estimate. That, combined with the light wind that moves the flowers like swings on a playground, made it challenging to get sharp images.

What really amazes me is how the lower white parts of the blossoms are textured. I had never noticed this with the real flowers before taking these pictures. Which just goes to show how photography can expand your awareness of the world. :-)

White Windflowers

The weather has finally turned sunny and warm, spring is definitely here. In fact, it's almost warm enough to be early summer.

These beautiful white flowers grow in my garden under a rose bush. They are windflowers, also known as wood anemone, windflower, (European) thimbleweed, smell fox, or by their latin name anemone nemorosa.



The flower is quite small (about 2 cm across), so I had to get very close using an extension ring between the lens and the camera. A tripod was required, of course. ;-)

Rehearsal of the "Joseph"

Last weekend I had a really fun assignment shooting a rehearsal of the musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. It will be performed May 13th and 14th in Freising by a cast of almost 300 people.

What I saw was breathtaking - a stunning performance. Even though the performers are all laymen and -women, the choreographer, director, voice coaches, etc. are all pros working pro bono - and it shows.

Here are some impressions, you can find more on my Flickr! page in the Joseph set.










In case you have been looking carefully and feel confused: there are two different narrators to cover all four performances. :)