Orchids galore!

As we endure another poor spring and summer, one begins to wonder if the UK weather patterns will ever get back to normal. Even the boldest of scientists can't give a concise explanation and the jury is still out on 'global warming'. One thing that I can say for sure is that it has been a bumper year for orchids locally here in Kent. Of course, with extremes, there are always winners and losers: butterflies and migrant bird numbers are significantly down again this year.

It's all too easy to get down about such things but I'm going to resist this and enjoy the fact that this year has seen an abundance of orchids, following on from an excellent 2012.

Because of the cold, protracted spring, everything has been a little late this year - about 2-3 weeks I would say. Furthermore, from a photographic perspective, conditions have been far from ideal due to incessant strong northerly and easterly winds. Anyway, I'll stop bleating now and share some images with you.

Note: Unless otherwise stated all images were taken with a 100mm macro lens.

Old favourites

Lady orchid was the first species that I ever photographed and this south-eastern specialty has been prolific in 2013. On a recent trip to Denge Wood near Canterbury I can honestly say there were over 1,000 superb specimens in full bloom.

Lady orchid, dominating in a sea of emerging common spotted

Lady orchid flower spike

There is a large natural variation in colouration even at a single site, with some very deeply coloured ones, like those above, to ones that are a much paler pink.

The light colour also dramatically alters the resultant image. The one below was taken in very 'warm' evening light giving a much different mood to the ones above that were taken a couple of hours before sunset, on an overcast day. A single shot with a 500mm lens, 1/100th at f/9 ISO 400; the distant hedge helping to give a naturally diffuse and dark background.

Lady orchid flower spike in late-evening light

I have taken to shooting with Daylight white balance now so that the subtle changes in light quality are captured, rather than 'normalised' by the camera when shooting in AWB. Of course, one can always tweak things in Lightroom afterwards.

It has been a record year for monkey orchid with over 500 recorded at a single site on the North Downs. They had not grown as tall as previous years though, and were barely above the level of the underlying grass which made them difficult to photograph.

Monkey orchid flower spike (focus stack from 6 images)

My favourite species has to be the greater butterfly orchid: These pale, tall and delicate flowers are very difficult to photograph as they are susceptible to the slightest puff of wind. There were hundreds of these in Denge Wood this year where other years' counts have been in the tens.

Greater butterfly orchid (and common spotted)

Greater butterfly orchid

One of the UK's most abundant species is the common spotted and most downland sites where one can find orchids will have a vast array of these flowering in early June.

The photograph below was taken about 2 hours before sunset, directly into the sun. This gives a nice bright, fresh appearance. I used a reflector to push some light back onto the flower and lifted the shadows a little in LR afterwards.

Common spotted orchid

Something new

One the most rewarding aspects of nature photography is finding something new and unexpected. Whilst I was walking around in Denge Wood I noticed a species of flower I had not seen before, dotted sparingly in the vegetation.

Lady, common spotted and common twayblade...and something else!

It's not too obvious in the photograph above but there is a white flower on the left third. It turned out to be a white helleborine and I managed to track down an excellent specimen near the edge of the path.

White helleborine

So, those were a few highlights from the two recent evening trips I made. I'm hoping to find the time to track down a few more 'new-to-me' species over the next month or so, with man orchid at the top of the list. As much as I have enjoyed this year's 'orchid-fest' I'm hoping that next year brings us some more butterfly-friendly weather.

Earlier orchid posts on Wonky Horizons

Both Anthony and I have posted before on wild orchid photography:

• Photographing wild orchids
• Focus-stacking wild orchids
• A morning on the Kent downs
• Heath spotted orchids at Hothfield Heathlands

Focus stacking wild orchids

Monkey orchid flower head: D300/ 90mm Tamron f/2.8. Focus stacked with Helicon Focus.

Orchids in the landscape. D300/Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6

As a follow-up to Martin's last post on photographing wild orchids, here are a couple of mine from this week.

The evening when Martin and I went to see the orchids was very still, so it looked like a good time to photograph them: even though the light was quite dim, the orchids were not moving in any wind, so slow exposures were possible. The sky was also quite bright, which gave the opportunity to open up the shadows in the orchid flowers by using a small reflector positioned at the base of the orchid plant.

I wanted to be able to get some close-up pictures of the flowers where the background was suppressed by being defocussed. The problem with this is that the orchids were in quite dense foliage, so to get an out of focus background means using quite a wide aperture. Correspondingly, there is then the problem of depth of field across the flower. As I have blogged previously, one solution to this problem is to use focus stacking. In this, a series of images is taken by changing the focus point through the subject, and then the images are combined in software (I use Helicon Focus) to produce a sharply focused image across the depth of the subject. The background is still so far out of the plane of focus that stacking does not change its smoothness.

We met Martin's friend Steve at the site, who was also out photographing the orchids. He is another Nikon user, and he offered to lend me his Tamron 90 mm f/2.8 macro lens to use on my D300. The picture at the opening of this blog post (upper picture) is a stack from one of the resulting series of images with his lens (thanks, Steve!). The images were all taken at f/5.6, which I chose to give a sufficiently smooth background, but with enough depth of field within the flower so that the individual planes of focus did not have to be impossibly close to each other. I set the camera onto manual control (aperture, shutter speed and focus), and then used the smallest possible movements of the focusing ring between shots to move the plane of focus across the subject.

Back home, I simply exported 16-bit ProPhoto RGB Tiffs from Lightroom, and popped them into Helicon.  As a first go at focus stacking orchids in the wild, I think it is not too shabby, and the Tamron lens seemed to live up to its very high reputation.

I had taken my own 60 mm micro-Nikkor: although that is a great studio-type lens for flowers, on this occasion I really feel that the extra focal length of the 90 mm was very helpful. It would also have been nice to be able to control the camera using automation to ensure even and small steps. Helicon Remote does this very well, but you need to run it from a laptop, and I have enough to carry without schlepping a laptop on countryside shoots! I see on their forums that Helicon are finding it difficult to adapt Helicon Remote to the iPad: I hope this can be sorted because I think that controlling focus stacking from an iPad in the field would be a very powerful approach.

I went back with Gina a couple of days later. She was also keen to see the orchids, and was an uncomplaining assistant with another shot. The evening we went back it was too breezy for focus stacking -- the orchids were waving around far too much. But the overall light was nicer, so I tried some pictures to show the orchids in their landscape setting (lower image, above).

My idea was to try to show the orchids (really quite small flowers) and the slope of the valley they are growing in. As I've mentioned previously, I have a predilection for using an ultrawide lens; I thought that by getting down to the level of the flowers, and as close to them as possible, with the Sigma 10-20mm lens set at 10 mm on the D300, it should be possible to show them in their context.

Several difficulties came up with this, not the least being that while the lens needed to be set on very close focus for the orchids, but I also wanted to show the extent of the valley. The simplest way to get the required depth of field was to use f/22. If you read the forums, you will be told in no uncertain terms never to stop down this far because diffraction effects will ruin the picture. And there is no question that this setting does nothing for the ultimate sharpness of the image. In general terms, it might have been possible to use focus stacking to achieve the extreme depth of field I wanted, but with the flowers waving in the wind I didn't fancy effects of ghosting. The other problem was with the range of brightness between the side of the valley where the flowers were and the sky that I wanted to include. The brightness range was in excess of four stops. So to get everything on scale with a correct exposure overall in a single image, I put a three stop graduated neutral density filter over the sky (which also impinges on the tree line), and then lit the foreground by firing in a flash through a large diffuser. The flash helped give the orchid colours a bit of pop. I am reasonably happy with the resulting image: it required minimal post processing, and just for tidying up. I suppose I could have HDR’d it, or blended several exposures by hand in Photoshop, but I’d actually prefer not to.

Thinking about it, I think these two pictures illustrate the way I prefer to work. I’ll assemble a picture in post-processing when I need to (there’s no better way to get the first picture than by focus stacking), but I enjoy the challenge of getting a picture in a single raw file if I possibly can, even if it means using a combination of ultrawide lens, tripod, remote release, flash and wireless trigger, diffuser and ND grad. Nothing’s simple!

Lots of fun, and thanks to Martin for getting us there in the first place.

Photographing wild orchids

Introduction

It's all too easy to be lulled into thinking that you have to travel the earth got get interesting photographs. For me, one of the joys of photography is that there vast array of subject matter on my doorstep. All one needs is a bit of imagination and a sense of adventure.

For instance, Anthony and I were on the North Downs in Kent yesterday evening photographing monkey orchid. As well as proving interesting subjects, the peace and tranquillity in the countryside at that time of day proved a real tonic after a hectic day at work. 

In contrast to this, we will be at the Folkestone Air Show on Saturday, with as much noise and raw power that one could want. Totally disparate subjects and environments with entirely different photographic techniques required - a challenge that we both enjoy!

My nature photography journey

I've been interested in nature from a very young age, with a particular fascination for birds. Seasonal, gender and age variation together with migration meaning that there's always something interesting around at any time of the year. I have been photographing birds seriously for about eight years now and last year I diversified and developed a passion for wild orchids. Living in Kent gives me lots of opportunities to capture images of these as there are a number of excellent sites in the county.

My bird photography is characterised by paying very careful attention to the background (diffuse but complementary) as well as rendering the main subject sharp, and my approach to photographing orchids follows the same principles. The advantage with orchids is that they don't fly away; the disadvantage is that they are static and can't 'pose' for you. So it's all about lighting and composition.

I very much like to photography butterflies but numbers are very low this year, I guess in part due to the very wet April.

My approach to photographing orchids

Everyone has their own approach and there's no right or wrong way; that said, some work better than others. Here's a quick check-list:

• Do some research to estimate the best time of year to go for your target species. Some will only be in flower for a couple of weeks and this period will vary from year to year depending on how warm/wet the spring has been
• Keep an eye on the weather forecast and plan your trip for when there will be light winds - ideally less than 5mph - you may think the flower head is not moving but it's the biggest factor leading to blurred images
• Avoid bright sunny days as there is likely to be too much contrast to capture the subtlety of the flowers effectively
• For the two previous reasons I prefer the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset to maximise my chances
• Equipment wise, an SLR/macro lens combination is preferred. However, any lens with a focal length above 200mm can give good results. A tripod and/or a large beanbag is a must, as is a reflector to push light under your subject when doing close-up shots (don't underestimate the value of these simple props)
• Technically, I use mirror-lock-up in combination with a 2-second timer delay (although many people prefer using cable release)
• I shoot in aperture priority mode, with apertures ranging from f/4 for the whole flower to f/16 for close-ups
• It's then a case of composition and execution - carefully checking exposure, focusing and keeping those backgrounds nice and uncluttered!
• Start wide and work in close - see the examples and comments below

Monkey orchid in their natural environment. Early morning dew still heavy on the vegetation. Note the different shapes and heights. For single flower and close-ups pick a good specimen!

Single flower in its environment. This was taken in direct sunlight - note the high-contrast effect which  is a bit heavy for my taste

Getting in a bit closer now and depth-of-field is much narrower. I like this representation as it focuses the eye on the orchid flower and stem, with a subtle, complementary background melting away

Just the 'flower spike' lots of detail becoming apparent now, with the individual 'monkeys' clearly recognisable. The background is complete mush but a very natural colour!

A single 'monkey'. You really need a macro lens to get in this close.

If you have never photographed wild orchids before I'd recommend you give it a try. You won't get it right first time but you'll start on a journey that is not only fun but it will seriously hone your photographic skills

Trees in the mist

Philip and I got a couple of hours in this morning on the North Downs searching out some interesting trees in the mist.

Rather than the mist we had hoped for it was just foggy - none of that morning glow that can really lift an image. Nonetheless, it was still possible to shoot some soft monochrome images like the one below.

We bumped into a local farmer walking his dog and he was somewhat amused that a couple of guys would be up at the crack of dawn photographing in thick fog. Mad? Maybe - you decide.