More WILD Lady's Slipper

Looks like photographs of Yellow Lady’s Slippers this week are more common than the actual flower.
This was shot in the wild, but sometimes the wild gets a little too tough for the kind of photographs we want. In this case, both wind and strong light needed to be tamed, so I used a light tent in the field. But that made a bad background, so I used a black cloth. Since plain black backgrounds are not my favorite, however, I scattered dark-colored fallen leaves on it to break up the black. All this without disturbing the plants on the site! I did manage to get some all-natural shots between gusts, but I liked this because of the way it shows off the corkscrew sepals.

I have to thank my local (Saratoga County, NY) wild plant guru for finding this small wild population and sharing the location. Jackie Donnelly is a super-enthusiastic amateur botanist who is out hiking or paddling just about every day. She writes a great blog full of nature photos,"Saratoga woods and waterways" but actually found these on a trip to another county.

Canon 50D
Sigma 17-70mm. f/2.8
1/4 sec. @ f/16; ISO 200 in light tent
Tripod; mirror up; release