Poppy Three Ways

The saying goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Although why you’d want to skin a cat, I don’t know. It sounds mean, unpleasant, and essentially futile.

In any case, there are certainly more than one way to photograph a poppy. In this case, a white Icelandic poppy, Papaver nudcaule “Wonderland Mix” from Julian’s garden. (I say “Julian’s garden”– and my eight year old is very fond of this flower patch, and certainly helped design it and pick out its occupants, but guess who prepared it, planted everything, and maintains it? Hint: not Julian.)

In the photograph above, I photographed the poppy in ambient sunlight, using a small tungsten spot light to shine through the petals and create a luminous effect.

This photo shows a conventional–but extremely close–macro in ambient sunlight:

Poppy Fur

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Finally, this photograph was taken with my new macro flash kit (about which, more later):

Strobe Poppy

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Harold buys most of his digital photo equipment from B&H. Click here for Nikon DSLRs and here for Canon DSLRs. Keep in touch with what Harold is doing! For news, tips, techniques and special offers related to Harold's work and digital photography subscribe to the Harold Davis Photography email newsletter.

One Response to “Poppy Three Ways”

  1. Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » Macro Photography with the Nikon Close-up Speedlight Remote Kit Says:

    […] my garden showing the texture of my poppy was also taken with the straight macro rig. The poppy close-up that I blogged recently is another example of the impact of mounted both strobes on the […]

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