Photoblog 2.0

Iris ensata ‘Azuma-kagami’, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I originally got this cool Iris ensata ‘Azuma-kagami’ as a bare root plant from White Flower Farms, planted it in my garden, and forgot about it. Yesterday, we saw this flower. It struck me as surpassingly beautiful, and I photographed it yesterday and today in studio.

For this shot, I photographed the Iris ensata ‘Azuma-kagami’ (I do like how the name of this flower rolls off my tongue) vertically with a light box behind it. I lit the flower from the front with a tungsten spot equipped with a diffuser and barn doors.

To make the photograph, I used my 85mm perspective correction Nikon lens. This is a really neat hunk of glass, but entirely manual. You even have to stop the diaghram down manually with a push button when you’re ready to make the exposure.

The base exposure on the Iris ensata ‘Azuma-kagami’ is (at ISO 100) 3 seconds and f/48 (one of the nice things about this lens is how far it stops down). I layered in a second, darker exposure for parts of the flower at 2 seconds (still at f/48).

Related story: Iris.

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

It’s great to have Iris blooming in my garden again. This is an extravagantly beautiful flower. Once established, it keeps on multiplying. (A recent query I read in a gardening column was about how to slow down irises from multiplying over time. Answer: You can’t. Thin the flowers, and the ones you can’t give away it is morally OK to compost.)

You go Iris!

View this photograph larger.

View this photograph larger.

Here’s the same Iris photographed through the leaf with a flash (scroll to the bottom), and some of my earlier Iris photos.

A reader writes:

“I enjoy regularly reading your photoblog, and have learned much about digital photography from your book [Digital Photography Digital Field Guide], but enough with these iris pictures. Some of them are pretty, I grant you, but aren’t you getting bored with them?”

Well, I probably will never get bored with photographing Irises and other flowers, but I can take a hint. (OK, not a hint, but a big, fat nudge.) Also, maybe I am reaching a point of iris overload.

So this post will be my last Iris post for a while. And a special thanks to all the wonderful folk on Flickr who have said such nice things about my Iris set! (Click on an image in the set on Flickr to read the comments.)

If you really don’t want to see flowers, instead of looking at these Iris photos, you can always look at my stories about my recent awesome roadtrip instead of these!

More of my Iris photos here, here, and here!

Winged Iris, photo by Harold Davis.

Irises here, there, and everywhere. I am enjoying photographing this very special flower, it is one of my favorites.

The Iris petals in this photo remind me of wings. Very appropriate. In Greek mythology, Iris was a winged messenger for the gods.

Iris Tongue, photo by Harold Davis.

I am continuing to photograph the irises today. They are so beautiful, and look good when positioned with a red lily for background color.

This one reminds me of a tongue. Is this attractive Iris sticking out a tongue at us?

Whale Song of the Iris, photo by Harold Davis.

Phyllis got me some fresh Iris (from Trader Joe’s, not our garden!) and I’ve been photographing them as they open…