#beth root

This is another shot that was some time in the making. For about a week, I had my eyes on a group of these Red Trillium growing along the top of a slope at the edge of an old pine plantation. I knew what I wanted this shot to look like. I imagined the sky, glowing in bright sunset colours, seen through the pines with the flower in the foreground.

On a first try, for the sky to get colours in it the ambient light was too low and the flower and foreground were too dark. I tried increasing the exposure to get the flower bright enough but the shutter speed was too low so that the slightest puff of wind blurred the flower.

On another evening, I tried light painting the flower with an LED headlamp. Still this resulted in a fuzzy image and a washed out sky. Between tries there were some evening where the sky was cloudy and I would not have gotten the colours I wanted in the sky.

The evening I got this shot, the sky had finally cleared and I had brought a speedlight and strap-on diffuser. It was also the first evening where mosquitoes were out in mass. Lucky me with no bug dope; they ate me alive! The image was done in one shot at two seconds. The strobe was hand held off camera and fired manually with the output turned down to balance the sky.

Camera: Pentax K-3 Lens: Tamron SP 10-24mm f/3.5 DI II 22mm / ƒ/32 / 2.0s / ISO 100

I was crawling around in the leaf litter to try and get low enough for this shot. A very wide angle and a +2 close-up screw on diopter let me get so close it felt I was going to touch the ferns in the lower right hand corner with the front of my lens. The diopter created the motion effect in the background bokeh.

Camera: Pentax K-3 Lens: Tamron SP 10-24mm f/3.5 DI II 10mm / ƒ/5.6 / 1/400s / ISO 100

I had to get down on my belly to get low enough for this shot. I was mid-range on my Tamron wide angle zoom. A +2 close-up screw on diopter let me get closer and contributed to the fuzzy background bokeh.

Camera: Pentax K-3 Lens: Tamron SP 10-24mm f/3.5 DI II 14.4mm / ƒ/8 / 1/125s / ISO 100