Spotted Orchid

I still have a heap of wild (and some not so wild) flower photos to show you.

A few weeks ago, England was blasted with a heat wave: no clouds and lots of sun.  As Murphy’s Law would have it, when I thought, “Maybe I’ll bring my camera with me to work and take a walk at lunch time,” it clouded over the following day.  My way of tricking the world was to not think about bringing my camera with me at all, but to grab it at the last possible moment before leaving the house.  Take that, World!

And guess what? I won!

Common (or Heath?) Spotted Orchid

The day that it clouded over, I decided to ditch my bike and instead jog into work.  You may wonder why I would do such a thing and the answer is: my bike commute no longer constitutes exercise for me.  It’s too brief.  Instead, I huffed and puffed my way into work and arrived dripping sweat and feeling rather unfit.  Also, I had carted on my back: baby wipes (for a showerless shower), change of clothes and socks, and packed breakfast and lunch.  My bag bounced around on my back the whole way to work and was most unpleasant.  I have since run the distance unencumbered and it was a much easier jog.  So, I conclude that it is not that I am unfit but that I am crap at running with stuff on my back.

On my run in, I spotted these little beauties, which I would never have seen had I continued to cycle in, as they dot the verge alongside a smaller walking-only path.

The next day, I cycled in but with camera in tow and dithered my way home.  I dithered so long, it took me 3 hours to get home.  Luckily, my partner was away so there was no one freaking out about why it had reached the hour of 2130 and I was not yet home from work.

My best identification of this flower is that it is a Spotted Orchid.  I’m not sure if it’s Common or Heath but am inclined towards Common for two reasons (one more frivolous than the other):

1. I saw it, therefore it must be pretty common.  I don’t really hunt out wildflowers – just encounter them happily, enthusiastically and serendipitously during my day-to-day life and weekend wanderings – and would be extremely surprised if this were a rare species.

2. I saw it on The Common.

3. [bonus reason] The Common is not a heath in my understanding of the word.

While I was photographing this Orchid, two burly men on a tandem bicycle pulled onto the bike path and then immediately dismounted, ditched their bikes and wandered over to me.

“Hi!” said ever-so-friendly me.

“Oh, hi,” said first guy.  Second guy said nothing.

First Guy looked at me for a while, as Second Guy hovered behind him.  I tried to remember which one had been on the front of the tandem, and which on the back but I’d not paid them much mind until they approached my patch of flowers.

“Um, yeah. So, look at these,” First Guy said nervously to Second Guy.

“Hmm,” said Second Guy non-committally.

“They’re real pretty, huh?  Do you know what they are?  I think they’re spotted orchids but I’m not positive.” I, with my oh-so crazy friendliness, interjected.  They were, after all, no more than a metre from me.

“Yeah!,” piped up First Guy, a lot more enthusiastically than before, “Have you ever seen them here before? I haven’t!”

“No, I haven’t either but I don’t come this way much.  I saw them here yesterday morning and just had to come back for a photo shoot.”

“Cool,” said Second Guy.

I decided to move away from the orchids as my presence was obviously hampering their ability to enjoy the flowers.  I wondered if it was because I was female and they, male, and they just felt a bit awkward admiring some flowers around a girl.  I moved off to photograph some buttercups and eventually they departed, when I returned to keep trying.  The sun, however, had moved on and so I did too.

P&S Tip #3

I am rapidly exhausting my photography knowledge. But this last is something that surprises me that (some) people who use P&S cameras don’t realise: you can get in really close with most P&S and many make fine – and often excellent – photos. I’ve tried telling my siblings this one, but they don’t seem to hear me.  So, I’m gonna tell teh internets who always listen when no one else does.

Up close, macro photographs of flowers is how it all started for me.

Getting right up in the face of an Azalea. Exbury Gardens, April 2010.

My partner often laughs at how close I put our camera to something. As my eyesight is poor, I have occasional difficulties assessing short distances and, often, smash the camera lens up against the flower I want to photograph. Whoops – back out a centimeter! (And wait for the poor flower to stop shaking so I can photograph it.)

I have a friend who has a Panasonic FZ18 – the superzoom camera P&S so very popular a few years ago. I was over his place for lunch one day and his camera was out on the counter. I cannot now remember what, but there were (as always) plenty of snacks and nibblies, and something looked interesting and I may have said, “Ooh! That’s pretty!” and he replied, “Photograph it.”

So I took his camera, found the macro button, put the camera right up close to the subject, focused, framed and photographed.

“Whoa, you went close.”
“But you can get right up close with this camera. You can probably be about a centimeter away.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Reckon so.”

And of course, my test is to take photographs of my fingertips at different distances from the camera lens.

“See? All in focus!”
“Cool!”

So, if you have a macro function (and seriously, all P&S do!) get in real close because you probably can.

There – that’s it. That’s all my photography knowledge exhausted.

P&S Tip #2

P&S Tip #2. How to Force a Fast Shutter Speed on a Point & Shoot Camera (in low-light conditions):

As a general rule, at concerts, you don’t ever want to use the flash.  You are never anywhere near enough to the stage to make any decent photos and all you will get are brightly lit backs of heads surrounded by mysterious darkness. Interesting, perhaps; capturing the band, unlikely.

But if you have a P&S and you turn the flash off, it will most likely slow the shutter speed down and increase the ISO, and you will end up with poorly lit, noisy and blurry pictures. Artistic, perhaps; capturing the band, unlikely.

So, you can trick the camera. Trick it into thinking that you need a fast shutter speed. How? Turn the flash ON but then, cover it with your fingers or a piece of paper or the stub of your concert ticket receipt.

At the same festival, I was standing beside a man who kept trying to take photos of the band with the flash on, and then off, and then on, and then off. He kept tsking every time he looked at the picture on his LCD screen and would try again. I was most impressed by his perseverance. In a break between songs, I leant over and suggested that he try the above trick. He did not understand, initially, so I demonstrated on my camera. He still did not seem to understand me, so I demonstrated on his camera (with his consent, of course, I did not just snatch the thing out of his hands). Then he took a few photos with his camera, with his middle & ring finger blocking the flash. “Like that?” he mouthed and I nodded. Then he took a few more and finally, put his camera away and danced.

When the band finished, he turned to me and said, “Thanks! That’s a great tip!” and I replied, “Yeah, I reckon you took some great photos too.”
“Are you a photographer?”
“Lord, no. Just nosy,” and I winked and we went our separate ways.

I think I used the technique described in this post to take this photograph of Herman Dune, but I'm not certain. It is highly possible this photograph was taken by my Partner with his own nefarious methods and I can take no credit whatsoever. Still, I like illustrating posts.

This is my favourite Herman Dune song (and it’s a pretty cool video clip, too).

Check in again for my third (and last) point & shoot tip:

All About Macro…