Yellow

[finnbay]

Checked on a yellow ladyslipper spot today, and they were in full bloom. Forgot just how difficult they can be to expose properly, especially in the sunlight. Almost impossible to not get a hotspot in there somewhere. Anyway, a few shots of them from today:

Here's another yellow I finally fooled long enough to get a photo of, at least from 20 feet away:

Oh, and I'll through in one purple, too:

Flowers all taken with a Canon 40D and a 100 mm 2.8 macro. Various camera settings as I was playing with sun and shadow the whole time out.

The goldfinch with a 100-400 mm

[Dbl]

All great work Ken but I keep coming back to the wide shot #4.

[Steve Foss]

All nice, Ken. That wide shot is really great! That's as profuse as I've seen them blooming in that spot in the last four years. Must be the wetter cool spring and early summer is good for them.

Really nice work!

My recipe for no hotspots on waxy yellow ladyslippers is part capture and part PP. First I cut the sun with a diffusing disk if the sun is out or if the overcast is bright. Then I underexpose further by about a full stop. Those steps knock down the hot spots to manageable size so I can clone them out in post processing. Because of the underexposure, I generally work pretty hard to keep iso at 100, 200 at the most to reduce digital noise in the mid ranges and shadows in the flower and the background.

[finnbay]

Thanks guys. Steve, that's great advice!

[Steve Foss]

The alternative philosophy, of course, is just to leave the reflections there. Our eyes do see them in nature, after all.

But like many I'm inclined to try to get rid of them. It is human nature to improve mother nature.