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Wind



Wind, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

I photographed this California poppy surrounded by blue flowers today in a high wind.

I’ve mentioned before the wisdom of making photographic lemonade when given lemons. In this situation, I knew I couldn’t make a successful stopped-down high depth-of-field macro. So I decided to take advantage of the wind, and to try to portray the wind in the image I was creating.

With the camera on tripod, I opened the aperture as far as I could for the fastest possible shutter speed (1/125 of a second at f/5.6). I got down on my belly like a snake, and shot up into the blue flowers, focused tight on the poppy. My object was to show the contrast between the out-of-focus blue flowers blowing in the wind, and the poppy–which held still for just the decisive instant so that I could take this photo!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 7th, 2006 at 11:48 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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7 Responses to “Wind”

  1. Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » Raise High the ISO, Digital Photographic Craftspeople! Says:
    May 31st, 2006 at 1:07 pm

    […] iff or start rolling in poison oak while waiting for me). While using the wind to create a blurring motion effect like I did in this photo might have been a possibilty, nothing I saw seemed to l […]

  2. Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » A Classical Zinnia Says:
    June 11th, 2006 at 11:20 am

    […] ure needed for the depth-of-field extremely problematic—in total distinction to this photo of a Califonia poppy where I took advantage of the wind as a technique, and on purpose.
    […]

  3. Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » Fairae Lights Says:
    June 30th, 2006 at 6:33 pm

    […] harold_davis/124902757/” title=”Photo Sharing”> View this photograph larger. Read the original blog entry about this photo.

    This entry was posted

    […]

  4. Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » White California Poppy Says:
    June 5th, 2007 at 7:23 pm

    […] our roads almost like a weed. The red version is a great flower to photograph, for example Wind and California Poppy Quartet. But how nice to also have a white California poppy, Eschscholzia cal […]

  5. Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » Bokeh and the Zen of Blur Says:
    June 13th, 2007 at 11:31 am

    […] harold_davis/124902757/” title=”Photo Sharing”> View this photograph larger. Read the back story featuring this image. Bokeh comes from the Japanese word boke (ぼけ), meaning blur. The t […]

  6. Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » Each Apple Pear Says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    […] so I wasn’t going to able to bring a tripod to bear. Besides, there was a steady breeze. So I made the best of it, and hand held these photos using image stabilization at a fast enough shutter speed so that the […]

  7. Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » Hexachrome Color Says:
    June 18th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    […] as a full horizontal, but cropped for this usage to fit the vertical cover format. You can read the story of how I came to make this image […]

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