Some more spring wildflowers, and thoughts on composition

 

f/7.1, ISO 400, 1/100, 100mm macro lens

A Goldenstar (Erythronium rostratum) in its full glory. This is one of Ohio's rarest plants and is essentially known from only one giant population in the Rocky Fork valley of western Scioto County. A much smaller population was discovered in fairly recent times a few miles to the west, in Adams County.

About every time I post photos of this species, people let me know that they have "Goldenstar" growing in their yard or local park. Not so. They are seeing the superficially similar Yellow Trout Lily (E. americanum), which is common and widespread. Goldenstar has a very patchy distribution with isolated populations far removed from its Ozarkian strongholds.

Goldenstar Distribution. Map courtesy of BONAP

Green counties indicate that the species is present and not rare; yellow indicates it is present but RARE. The northeastern Kentucky and southern Ohio populations are far removed from the core range.

Back to the Goldenstar image above. The plant was growing between projecting buttresses of an American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) trunk. There were myriad potential subjects at this site but this one especially caught my eye as beech are a common associate in the rich woodlands favored by Goldenstar. The gray elephant skin bark of the trunk made a nice backdrop, and the senescent beech leaves are a nice touch. For this image, I used a common (for me) aperture of f/7.1 to softly blur background features and put the emphasis on the extraordinary flower. There were breezes on this morning, so I elevated the ISO to 400, and that gave a shutter speed of 1/100 - fast enough to freeze any slight wind-induced tremor. I'm trying to time shutter actuations with calm periods, of course.

A wide-angle lens (Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 II) is nearly always with me when I hunt flowers. It is incredibly useful for showcasing overall habitats. For this shot, the camera was on my mini-tripod, essentially flat on the humus. The lens is around eight inches from the flower - at its minimum focusing distance - showing how ultra-wide the reach of a lens like this is.

Goldenstar favors beech-maple forests with plenty of leaf litter and is often on steep slopes. This image presents very typical habitat for the rare lily, at least insofar as the Ohio sites go. This is a case where stopping down is effective, and the camera parameters were f/16, ISO 400, at 1/100 second. The lens was at 16mm for maximum spread. In my opinion, wide-angle lenses are an essential component of the ecological photographer's tool bag. They permit more of the story to be told.

f/9, ISO 250, 1/50, 100mm macro lens

A photogenic trio of Snow Trillium (Trillium nivale). Odd numbers can be quite appealing in regard to subjects. and I do typically find my eye more drawn to 3's, 5's, 7's etc. This group caught my eye from afar and I wouldn't have missed photographing them. This odd-even thing has even been quantified as the wonderfully named Rule of Odds. The RoO states that compositions with an odd number of subjects or elements will be more dramatic than a composition of an even number of subjects.

Pairing is common in our human bodies: two eyes, ears, hands, legs, arms, etc. The theory goes that when we look at something with odd numbers, the brain has more difficulty in grouping them, that something somewhere is leftover, and your brain commands your eyes to continue sweeping over the composition to find the "missing" part.

I don't know about all of that, but there does indeed seem to be to be an allure to the odd that makes us want to study odd-numbered subjects in greater detail than even-numbered ones.

Here's a very similar trio of Snow Trillium, with a slight tweak from the above image. As with the prior image, my ISO was at 200, but I stopped down to f/14. The tradeoff with smaller apertures is a diminishment of light entering the camera, which is mitigated by a slower shutter speed, 1/20 of a second in this case. By keeping the shutter open longer, the camera can harvest the same amount of light as it did when the aperture was a more open f/9 and thus could collect adequate light more rapidly - the prior shot was at 1/50. As there was no wind at this point in the early morning, I didn't care how slow the shutter speed was - it was essentially irrelevant.

As my camera was fairly close to the subjects, the depth of field was reduced. By moving the camera farther away, depth of field increases but so will your need to crop the image to make the same composition as shown here. So, to get a more depth I just shut down one and two-thirds stops to f/14. The background was not particularly cluttered or distracting so I wasn't too concerned about that. If you scroll up to compare with the prior image, you'll see that the rear flower is softer. To me, either image looks fine, but I probably prefer the f/14 shot above.

It's good practice, especially early on, to take images of the same subject with a range of apertures, to become familiar with the effects caused by aperture adjustments.

f/10, ISO 200, 1/60, 100mm macro lens

In spite of the Rule of Odds, I won't hesitate to fire away at evens. For a few minutes, the early morning light caused this pair of trilliums to glow, while the backdrop remained largely dark. It was incredibly alluring and I'm glad I happened to be there for their brief moment in the spotlight. I suppose the situation might have been even cooler had there been three (or five), but there wasn't. As with some prior shots, I stopped down a bit more to bring additional focus to the rear plant, especially as there were no background distractions. In hindsight I would have taken an image at f/16, too.

f/7.1, ISO 250, 1/50, 70-200mm lens at 175mm

Another violation of the Rule of Odds, but what good are rules if they can't be violated? This ensemble of trillia was too good to pass by. They festooned an otherwise barren limestone ledge, almost as if they were purposefully planted there. I like the exposed limestone, as Trillium nivale is very much a calciphile, or limestone lover. This shot was handheld, using my Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 II lens. The plants were in a hard area to set up a tripod on, but that lens has superb image stabilization and is easy to handhold and get sharp shots at slow shutter speeds, even slower than the 1/50 used here. Normally I'll always use a tripod if circumstances permit, though. And as an aside, I always try to remember to turn off the image stabilization on stabilized lenses when they are mounted to a tripod. If turned on, the image stabilization can lead to an effect called a feedback loop when tripod-mounted and that can lead to blurred images. Yep, just one more thing to remember.

f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/60, 100mm macro lens

I'm back in compliance with the Rule of Odds here, if only a solo subject. The petals of this Snow Trillium are already blushed with pink, a sign of aging. The flower will soon wither away. By now, just a week later, many of the thousands of trilliums in this population will be tinged with pink and it won't be long before the flowers are gone. This site, by the way, is accessible. It is the Arc of Appalachia's Chalet Nivale Preserve in northeastern Adams County, Ohio, and it isn't a tough place to get around. While you may have missed the show this spring - unless you get there fast - there's always next March.

Some spring wildflowers, and thoughts on the photography thereof

 

f/9, ISO 250, 1/100 - 100mm macro lens

A Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) grows before our eyes - or at least mine, at the time. I shot this poppy family member back on February 26 - a very early date. When I passed this spot on the trail a few hours earlier, I saw no sign of the flower. A fairly warm and virtually snowless February spurred southern Ohio wildflowers to erupt earlier than normal.

The image above and all of the following were made on either February 26, or March 9, at the Arc of Appalachia's Ohio River Bluffs Preserve, or their Chalet Nivale Preserve. Both are in Adams County, Ohio.

When I go afield with botanical photography as the objective, I generally pack three lenses: Canon (all my camera gear is Canon) 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, 16-35mm f/2.8 II wide-angle, and the 70-200mm f/2.8 II. In the case of these images, all were shot with the Canon R5 mirrorless camera. I have examples made with two of those lenses in this post, along with some thoughts on using the gear effectively to create wildflower portraits.

f/7.1, ISO 250, 1/8 second, 100mm macro lens

Harbinger-of-spring (Erigenia bulbosa) peeks from leaf litter. The hardy little parsley is one of the first spring (late winter!) wildflowers to emerge.

Even old dogs should be able to learn new tricks. At one time, I tended to use narrow apertures (often f/11 to f/16) for greater depth of field, and - horrors! - often flash. Then I met Debbie DiCarlo and we began teaching some photography classes together. I loved her botanical work and was astute enough to notice that it did not look much like mine. And I wished mine looked more like hers.

So, from her I learned about softer, more wide-open apertures, scrapping the flash, and thinking harder about composition. The Harbinger-of-spring above manifests this. Now, most of my plant work is between f/4 and f/7.1 and this image was made at the latter. The closest flowers are the focus point, and I do not care that the rest of the subject is not in sharp focus. The wide aperture melts the background but the dissected cauline (stem) leaves can still be seen.

f/6.3, ISO 200, 1/320, 70-200mm lens at 140 mm

Early Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum giganteum) has a bizarre appearance when it is emerging. Nearly all parts of the plant are an attractive purplish shade, and the flowers are already mature even as the foliage unfurls. Their bright yellow anthers provide the only punctuation point to the plant.

For this, I used my 70-200mm with a 25mm extension tube, at 140mm. The hollow tube allows for closer focusing and does not detract at all from image quality as there is not glass within it. As usual, I am in my ISO sweet spot - 200. For plants, I almost always operate between ISO 100 and 400, and normally between ISO 100-200. I want the cleanest possible files, and there is normally no need to use high ISO when shooting plants. I like the effect of the mini-telephoto 70-200, which really compresses the subject and obliterates the background. A busy background is normally not a desirable quality for botanical imagery, at least to me.

f/7.1, ISO 100, 1/40, 100mm macro lens

A White Trout Lily (Erythronium albidum), the earliest of our lilies to bloom. This is a diminutive plant, and to make effective captures more challenging the flowers dangle almost straight down. I generally would prefer to have my camera horizontal to the flower, and better yet, slightly below it. The bottom line is plant photographers will spend lots of time on the ground, on their subjects' plane.

I'm almost always working off a tripod, and my current favorite is the relatively inexpensive Oben CTT-1000, with their excellent ball head. It is made from carbon fiber, is flyweight, versatile in positioning, and allows me to get my camera nearly on the ground. Stabilizing the rig is vital, for reasons I will expound on under the next image.

f/5.6, ISO 250, 1/320, 100mm macro lens

White Trout Lily flowers are botanical will-o-the-wisps, appearing to float low over the forest leaf litter. To get this perspective, my camera was under the plant and shooting upwards, thanks to my mini-tripod.

A major reason why tripods are important in botanical photography is because slow shutter speeds are often used. Of the three major parameters - aperture, ISO, and shutter speed - the latter is least important. I want a low ISO to keep my images as clean (less noise) as possible. The aperture is a major driver as it dictates the look that I get of my subject and its environs. The shutter speed is merely whatever the aperture and ISO dictate it to be. While this trout lily flower was shot at a comparatively fast speed, the Harbinger-of-spring above was shot at 1/8 second! And the previous trout lily shot was made at 1/40 second.

No one will have much luck hand-holding a rig at such slow shutter speeds. The miss rate would skyrocket, and you likely would not get any sharp images. This is why wind is the plant photographer's enemy. As long as the subject is immobile, one can use very slow shutter speeds in tangent with very low ISO settings, no problem. Windy days? I'm not going to be shooting wildflowers.

f/16, ISO 200, 1/2 second, 100mm macro lens

The seldom noticed pistillate (female) flower of American Hazelnut (Corylus americana). It is truly elfin and thus overlooked. This was - for me - a rare case of using a tiny aperture, f/16 in this case. I did so because I wanted sharpness throughout the bizarre blossom. The bokeh (background quality) is creamy brown because there was nothing for probably 20 or more feet behind the subject. The brown tones are caused by a distant leaf-covered slope.

Note the shutter speed - one-half second! While the camera/lens was firmly stabilized on a tripod, there are additional steps to ensure a sharp image. I set my camera's shutter release to a 2-second delay so that my hands aren't even touching the rig when it fires (there is also a 10-second delay option but that's usually overkill). I also have the camera set so that I can just touch the back viewing screen with my finger, and it will instantly focus on that spot, then activate the shutter (2 seconds later). Complete stillness with the camera. Not all cameras (yet) have that touch screen option, but just about all DSLR or mirrorless cameras have the timer delay feature.

f/8, ISO 200, 1/30, 100mm macro lens

A lethargic group of Hepatica (Hepatica nobilis) flowers on a frosty morning. A few hours later, with significantly warmer temperatures, the flowers would be proudly upright and fully expanded. I stopped down a bit more than usual - to f/8 - for a bit more depth on this elfin flower forest. Focus was on the top right flower, which was closest to the lens. It's almost always best to focus on the nearest flower, as that is where the eyes of viewers of your image will likely first be drawn.

NOTE: I take the conservative position and lump the two hepatica "species" together under the available name Hepatica nobilis. If you split them, this would be the so-called Sharp-lobed Hepatica (H. acutiloba).

In my next post, I will share short sequences of two of Ohio's rarest and most beautiful lilies, with some thoughts on composition.

First spring wildflowers!

A capacity crowd of 300 people jams the barn where the annual Amish Bird Symposium takes place near Wheat Ridge, in Adams County, Ohio. Yesterday was the 17th version, and things are not slowing down. Roman Mast was the catalyst behind starting ABS, and I was at the inaugural one in 2004. While Roman, who always served as emcee - and a great one! - has moved to north-central Ohio, a wonderful organizing committee runs the show smoothly.

I've been to most of these, and was there yesterday to kick off the speakers with a talk about sparrows. They wisely don't pack the agenda - two talks in the morning, two in the afternoon. All of the talks were great, and the other covered migration, hummingbirds, and John Howard wrapped up with a look at Adams County's incredibly diverse flora and fauna through the seasons.

Photo courtesy Kathy McDonald

One of the best parts of the symposium is catching up with people that I don't get to see that often. Attendees come from all over the state, and you'll never know who you'll see. Here we have Bruce Miller (excellent bird photographer!), your narrator, Tim Colborn (president of the Ohio Ornithological Society), and legendary Jenny Richards, longtime naturalist at Shawnee State Park.

Speakers have always been gifted with a beautiful handmade wooden plaque. Normally they feature specialty birds of the region, such as blue grosbeak, chuck-will's-widow, and loggerhead shrike. I got a special one this year. Mine featured my favorite bug and inarguably the most spectacular insect in the solar system, the amazing Amorpha borer, Megacyllene decora! This rare beetle is a coleopteran specialty of this region and an animal I have long been smitten with. Read more about them HERE.

Not that the symposium wasn't fun, because it was, but I was really looking forward to stopping at a favorite spot on the way home. This stunning riparian corridor is lined with limestone cliffs, and the protected calcareous soils send wildflowers forth before they can be found in most other places. This truly Lilliputian parsley is the aptly named harbinger-of-spring, Erigenia bulbosa, and it was near peak bloom yesterday. Some plants are so small they barely protrude beyond the leaf litter.

I had figured on a quick half an hour here, but that stretched to two hours. I've not been able to get afield much at all of late, and it was glorious reveling in the onset of spring and its first wildflowers on a crisp blue sky early March day.

My primary target was our smallest and earliest trillium, the snow trillium, Trillium nivale. Paying homage to these elfin lilies is a near annual rite of spring for me, and the sheer number of trillia at this site can be breathtaking. They were just coming on yesterday, and if it's a big year, several thousand plants could be in flower here later.

As the afternoon sun waned, I decided my time of botanical communion was up and it was time to hit the road for Columbus. Walking out of the woods, I glanced up the slope and saw that the sun was streaking the forest floor with golden strips of light. I raced up to see if I could find an open trillium lit by the sun's rays, and Bingo! I got my plant just before the massive star dipped below the horizon. A great ending to a wonderful day.

PHOTO NOTES: I went off the photographic reservation on most of these images. I was in an experimental mood, and shot all but the last of the plant images with Canon's beautifully bizarre but utterly superb 200mm f/2 lens, with a 25mm extension tube. If you saw a recent post that I made about shooting lambs, HERE, that was the lens that I used. People and other larger animals, and sometimes tight landscape shots, would be this lens' typical uses for me. But, coupled with an extension tube to allow it to focus much more closely and the 200 turns out to be an excellent botanical lens. The lens is a tank, and a tripod is essential for this work.

The last image was shot with Canon's ultra-wide angle 16-35mm f.2.8 II lens, handheld and laying on the ground for perspective. Wide-angles, which often focus very closely as this one does, can be great tools for casting your subject plant in a broader light and putting it in a habitat context.

Snow Trillium erupts

A slightly swollen and roiled creek flows by what, at first blush, appears an ordinary wooded slope. It's not - heavy sheets of dolomitic limestone lay just under the surface. The presence of this rock creates just the sort of thin limey soil favored by one of our true harbingers of spring. Those of you that live up here in the Midwest's northern latitudes, take heart. Following is the most surefire botanical indicator of Spring that I've yet seen.

On my way back from yesterday's Amish Bird Symposium in southernmost Ohio's Adams County, I stopped off to have a look at our largest population of Snow Trillium, Trillium nivale. Don't know that I would have, ordinarily, but John Howard tipped me that he'd seen a few plants in bloom there the preceding Wednesday.

Upon arrival at the rocky slope, it took only seconds to spot tiny white flecks of white glimmering in the dim rainy woodland. Yes indeed, the trillium were bursting forth in profusion - the earliest I have ever seen them, at least at this site. I've photographed them at this spot in at least two other years, and on both occasions the population was near peak bloom about one month later than this date. Snow Trillium, from my experience, are rather fickle as to when they flower, seemingly not so tied into a specific photoperiod - length of day - as our other plants.

This is the smallest of Ohio's eight trillium species, and easily the earliest of the lot to bloom. Its specific epithet - nivale - means "snowy", and it isn't uncommon to see a patch that gets carpeted with a late snow, the flowers poking forth from a snowy blanket.

Snow Trillium is one of nearly 100 species of vascular plants that was discovered and described to science from Ohio. The type locality - the place of the original discovery and collection - was along the banks of the Scioto River near Columbus, in 1834. John Riddell was the collector and his type specimen still exists, safeguarded in the New York Botanical Garden. If you want to see it, click HERE.

Every week will bring new plants pushing forth and spreading their petals. March is a welcome time of year after these cold and snowy past few months.

More flowers of spring

Onward ho with some more of our earliest flora! You of the tundra-people in the Great White North, where scarcely a dandelion is yet blooming, can take heart knowing that spring is rapidly steamrolling across the landscape. The following photos come from last Sunday’s southern Ohio botanical foray with the Wild Ones.

Lumpers and splitters. Ya either love ‘em or hate ‘em, depending upon your expertise and perspective. These are the scientists who study taxonomy, or the science of classification. Their antics are probably most widely known in the bird world, as there are so many bird watchers and such a widespread interest in listing, or seeing how many species one can find.

“Lumping” is basically sewing a “species” back together after it has been considered two or more species, such as was the case with our juncos. “Splitting” (loud cheer, bird listers!) is when a decision is made that one species is actually comprised of distinct enough entities that it warrants being cleaved into two (or more) species.

And such was the case with the above plant. Far more lumping/splitting goes on in the botanical world than is the case with ornithology, as we learn more about plants. This plant is Giant Blue Cohosh, Caulophyllum giganteum, formerly considered a variety of Blue Cohosh, Caulophyllum thalictroides. However, it blooms a few weeks earlier, and has larger flowers with consistently purple sepals.

Note how the plant is strongly purplish. The young, growing leaves and shoots are flush with anthocyanins, which help protect young sensitive tissues from potentially harmful UV rays. As growth continues, more chlorophyll will be produced and eventually the plant’s tissues will become green.

A beautiful Wild Ginger plant, Asarum canadense, one of our earliest blooming wildflowers. Look closely at the base.

A plant that puts its flower this close to the ground is likely pollinated by ground-dwelling bugs – probably beetles and perhaps ants, in this case.

We were on a quest for rare flora, and this elfin mustard fit the bill. It is Leavenworthia, or Leavenworthia uniflora in botany-speak. A southerner, it gets no farther north than Adams County and vicinity, and grows in barren limey soils, often woth other rare mustards. This specimen is already bedecked with the plump cigar-shaped fruit, or siliques. A persistent flower is visible in the upper right. Truly a hands and knees plant, the whole thing stands perhaps two inches tall. This genus commemorates a rather obscure botanist, Melines Conklin Leavenworth.

Some plants were already on their way out. We visited a massive population of Snow Trillium, Trillium nivale, but most were done and gone, and the few flowers we found were a bit on the faded side. This is a rarity in Ohio and most states in which it occurs. Note our only native Sedum growing with it – Wild Stonecrop, Sedum ternatum, with its thick, round, fleshy leaves.

An avalanche of Wild Leek, Allium tricoccum, tumbles from a ravine near Shawnee State Forest.

But it wasn’t the leek we sought, although we certainly appreciated that onionish spectacle. Our target was this rarest of lilies, the outrageously beautiful Goldenstar, Erythronium rostratum. It is know from but one small stream drainage in Ohio, and this is the only population north of the Ohio River. There are thousands of plants, and they bloom en masse over a few day period.

Come a bit too late, and this is all you’ll see of the Goldenstar, other than the oddly speckled leathery leaves. As if turned off by a light switch, nearly all of the flowers vanish overnight, quickly replaced by these curious pendant fruits with long beaks. The specific epithet rostratum means “beaked”. Like the Wild Ginger, the fruit is purposefully held low to the ground. Ants, baby, ants. They make the world go ‘round, and also transport Goldenstar seeds to new locales.

Usually, when I show photos of Goldenstar, someone lets me know that they have it in their local patch. Not bloody likely, mate – it is this species, the far more common and widespread Yellow Trout Lily, Erythronium americanum. Note how the tepals curve backwards strongly, while those of the Goldenstar are held outwards on a flat plane. This species also lacks the beaked fruit of the rarity.

I hope that you are making time to get outside and enjoy the rush of spring.