It’s a dull day, but not too windy so it’s great for flower photography. I had been waiting for weeks for the early coralroots to bloom and now it finally was time, so I took the gear to the forest. The early coralroot (Goodyera repens) is a common orchid and it grows plentiful in my backyard forest, but it was all the harder to find a collection of flowers that suited my pre-visualised image. I guess it would be easier to base the image on reality, than trying to find reality that matches your image… Anyway, I finally found something close enough and got to work. I was wearing mosquito-proof clothing, but they still got the better of me – they were out in obscene numbers and when you’re wearing a mesh hood, you’d better make sure that the mesh doesn’t touch your skin at any place because that’s an invitation for the mozzies to bleed you. So I took the pictures and didn’t bother to frame many different versions, just hurried home with my chin itching from the bites. But I got a keeper, so it was worth it!Since I didn’t really have any other bright ideas for a dull day, I drove to my waterlily lake, trusting that it would provide me with something to do. I wasn’t disappointed and was able to go for waterlily closeups, at one point I even had the 1.4 teleconverter attached. I was following the flower slowly drift in the wind, and noticed that it had turned favourably for some low-angle images, which would give me a green forest reflection on the water instead of the grey/black of the overcast sky (when you polarise off the reflection, the result is black water). So I got the tripod down low and I was just simply stunned at how the flower looked in the viewfinder. I just stared, feeling quite emotional for a moment, actually. I couldn’t do it justice because the difference between the dark forest reflection and the white flower is too much for the camera to record, but afterwards I was amazed at this one:
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t quite mean it to turn out this way. I thought I had the tripod low enough and took a shot (this one). Then I noticed the little bit of sky reflecting at the bottom and flattened out the tripod completely, giving me only the forest reflection as BG. But looking at the images now, it’s this one that stands out for me, thanks to the partial sky reflection and with just a hint of waves on the surface. Without the sky, even the composition would be a little bit off, but now I don’t dare to crop off any of the light (otherwise I would crop a bit from left and top). I wish I could sometimes do this on purpose, but I’ll take serendipity any day!
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I updated minnak.net by adding a page for the orchids, complete with Latin, English, Swedish and Finnish names. So far it’s 11 different orchids – I’ve counted Dactylorhiza maculata and Dactylorhiza maculata fuchsii as separate, same thing with Dactylorhiza incarnata and Dactylorhiza incarnata cruenta. Not everyone seems to agree that they are different species, but I prefer 11 species rather than 9, so different they are!