Baby Breeches

I made my first-of-year outings, looking for woodland wildflowers yesterday morning. I was pleasantly surprised at finding several species growing through the leaf mulch that covered the floor of the woods. I was especially surprised when I saw several Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria). This is a very common spring wildflower in my area, but what was surprising was the extremely small size of the blooms. They were fully formed, but about half the height of the typical plants. I suspect this is a result of our recent cold weather. I did notice a lot of larger Dutchman’s Breeches plants, but none had buds or flowers yet. Moving in tight with my macro lens, I captured these images:

Dutchman's Breeches wildflowers

This next image was captured by making 7 individual images, each with a different plane in focus, then combining them in Helicon Focus software (this technique is called “Focus Stacking” and allows one to create an image with the entire subject in focus, but still keeping a small Depth of Field so that everything else in the frame is out of focus).

Dutchman's Breeches wildflowers

Along with the Dutchman’s Breeches, I saw lots of buds on Bluebells, as well as some Dog-eared Violets emerging through the leaf litter. And there will be more species appearing very soon, especially with the warmer weather predicted for the next week! :o)

Photographic Equipment Used:

  • Canon 1D Mark 3 body
  • Canon EF180mm, f/3.5 macro lens
  • Gitzo 1258-LVL tripod, with a Kirk Ent. HD ballhead
  • ISO 200
  • Aperture f/8 and f/5 (focus stacked images)
  • Shutter 1/50 sec. and 1/125 sec. (focus stacked images)
  • Helicon Focus software used to combine the 7 individual images of the focus-stacked image

 

 

Posted in Focus Stacking, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Wildflowers
Tags: , , , , , , , , .
Permalink bookmark.
Follow comments: RSS feed for this post.
Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.