At the beginning of this month, I had the fortune of stumbling across a rare flower explosion in southeast Arizona. Locals in the area said it was the best they had seen in their lifetime. I grew up there, and never saw anything like it. (If you click on my Gallery link you can see a couple other examples.)
Jay's
interesting question about shooting outside of the golden hours struck a nerve in regards to poppies. They typically are only fully open when the light is bright and direct. On my recent trip, I found that by the time they opened in the morning the nice soft light was gone. In the evening, there was a small window without harsh lighting before they closed, but the wind tended to be worse.
One of these days I'm going to figure out how to shoot brightly lit poppies. But until then, here is a directly lit, bald blue sky, poppy scene.
Nikon D80
Nikon 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 at 24 mm
1/180 sec at f/16 and ISO 100
Blended for DOF
Comments
22 commentsTake care.
Albert Darmo Canada
Carol
Look at how the color pops in that bright light. I approach midday unfiltered clear sky light as a ISO and exposure challenge. I have decided to drop the word "harsh" as an adjective to describe light in an image. It's not harsh it's just light, it all comes from the same source the sun. Since there are only 10% of daylight that is the low angle atmosphere filtered light, I refuse to throw away the other 90% . A stunning carpet of poppies John, and as you observed they are closed in the magic hours. Judging from your fine image that day has already arrived, just like it did for me in this wildflower season, and when I discovered the branch, shadows and yellow hillside near Gorman.
Paul
Ed
Pat
stunning image. I must get to AZ for wildflower season next year.
John