Waiting for spring in Maine can sometimes be maddening. All your friends down south are mowing their lawns and picking ticks out of their ears, and yet here we are with new snow in the first week in May and skeletal trees. And then, as if a switch is flipped, spring is upon us. It reminds me of those old Wile E. Coyote cartoons where the idiot protagonist is standing with his foot caught in the railroad tracks and here comes the train. But it is so far away, and doesn’t appear to be getting any closer, so Mr. Wile E. turns toward the camera and gives a wry wink, as if he has all the time in the world. And then whamsplat, he’s creamed once again.
One sign of spring is the daffodils blooming, a sure sign of the warmth to come (although I have photos of them bent under a load of snow, as well). I almost waited too long to shoot these; daffodils are long-lasting, but then one day they just crinkle, dessicate, and fall over (also a human trait). Anyway, I did find four blooms that were fresh and intact, and brought them into the studio for a little portrait session. This was a remarkably easy shot (splash photography is rocket science, but once you know the basics it’s pretty straightforward). Here’s a lousy snapshot of the setup.
The flowers were suspended by shoving their stems in a funnel, and then another funnel was added, for more drippage. Two speedlights, at left and right, provide all the lighting, with the help of a small reflector below to add just a bit of fill to the lower blossom. By using the speedlights at 1/64th power, the effective shutter speed of the shot was around 1/10,000 of a second, plenty quick to freeze the action, even though I was using the camera at its maximin flash sync speed or 1/160th of a second. Then it was just a matter of pouring a lot of water through those funnels, picking the best main image, composting in bits of secondary images, and tweaking the whole thing. Oh, and I flipped the flowers around right way to, for more visual interest.
Here’s the majestic Flickr version.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 35mm macro lens at f/11, ISO 200, shutter speed as described, water
