Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

A while back I wrote about the Holga camera, and the interesting and unique shots that this inexpensive camera can produce. Inspired by the softness of the Holga, I’ve been trying out other bad cameras, in hopes of finding other silk purses amid the sow’s ears. Inspiration for this comes, of course, from JunkStoreCameras.com, the ultimate on-line resource for all your junk camera needs.

I’ve bought and experimented with a variety of junk cameras, and have always come back to the Holga. With the exception of the Ricoflex ModelIV - which has a certain sweet patina to it - most 'junk' cameras that I’ve tried have been, well, too good. They may be soft and unsharp by modern standards, but in reality they produce some pretty good images. Others are decidedly not sharp, but produce images that lack any kind of character. One nice aspect of the Holga is the combination of a sharp ‘sweet spot’ with overall blurred and distorted edges.

So you can image my surprise at finding a good junk camera, and at the dollar store to boot. Here’s a shot of the graveyard down the way, taken on a $1 “Special Moments” 35mm camera. This is a ‘focus free’ model, with one aperture and shutter speed. The film used was Orwo Pan ISO 125, pushed two stops. The camera certainly lives up to the 'focus free' designation! I’m pretty happy with the preliminary results – and with a freezer full of 35mm B&W film, I can find ample uses for this new addition to the camera collection.

I started writing these essays just over three weeks ago – its hard to believe how much the seasons have changed in such a short time. Venturing out yesterday I realized that the forest has been transformed. The canopy is emerging, and the once bare undergrowth is now lush green.

The wildflowers have continued to change as well. The once ubiquitous Spring Beauty is in retreat. It’s still plentiful and common, but the huge patches of it that covered the forest floor just days ago are now gone. Only small clumps or individual flowers linger on. The False Rue Anemone and white Trillium continue to thrive, but they have clearly reached their peak and have begun to fade. Now its the endgame, and the later species of flowers are emerging – bellwort, wild ginger, red trillium, and wild marigold are now out in abundance.  Friday’s trip into the woods brought the chance to photograph many of these species. It also brought a real treat, in the form of a Quadrillium – a Trillium with four petals and four leaves. These are said to be fiarly rare – perhaps as rare as four leafed clovers. This is the second time I’ve seen one, the first time being two year ago. Ironically, as I was hiking out of the woods I thought to myself that finding a four petaled trillium would be the perfect end to the day – and a few minutes later I noticed one right by the side of the path. A perfect end to a morning’s shooting.  

 

 Technical details: All shots taken with Pentax *ist-D, A* 200 f4 macro lens.

Note: Updated February 7, 2015. Added notes about live view, focus peaking and articulated LCD screens.

I posted several articles about wildflowers in recent weeks, and as the spring wildflower season comes to a close, it seems timely to comment a little on the techniques used to photograph wildflowers. So here are a few “how to” tips and tricks for photographing wildflowers (or any other flower for that matter.)

•  Respect the subject: Some wildflowers are endangered species, and virtually all woodland wildflowers are suffering from a loss of habitat and encroachment from invasive species.  So I never uproot or relocate the subjects, or disrupt the flowers around them, even if they are annoyingly in the way. It's also important o watch where you step to avoid crushing those plants not part of your shot.
• Control the lighting: The quality of lighting is crucial for virtually all photographs. Direct sunlight will usually be too harsh (too much contrast) for high quality shots. I usually use a translucent diffuser to soften the light. In addition, a reflector can be used to bounce light back onto the flower, usually at a low angle. The bounce light brings out the textures in the flower, and make the lighting more lively. Of course – don’t overlook filtered natural light. Most woodland wildflowers thrive under the soft light filtered by the emerging leaves in the forest canopy above. If the trees are doing the diffusing for you – no need to use the diffuser! 

I use the nice ‘pop open’ style Lumiquest diffuser and reflectors. These are nice because they fold up to be quite compact, but you can easily make do-it-yourself lighting aids. For years I used a white umbrella as a diffuser and an 8x10 inch white card for a reflector. The diffuser does have to be fairly large, because you need even lighting throughout the frame, but the reflector can be quite small since you just need to illuminate the subject, usually a small flower. 

• Camera Support: I use a digital SLR  and typically need to shoot at f8-11 to get the depth of field needed to capture all of the detail in the smaller flowers. Of course, the aperture you choose to use depends on your creative intent and also on the camera formate you are using. Here's a sample photo taken on an APS C DSLR at f11 - as you can see, just enough depth of field to ver the subject without creating a cluttered background:

The combination of stopping down a bit, and also using softer diffused natural lighting, means that shutter speeds can get pretty low - too low to for hand held shots. As a result it’s important to mount the camera on a tripod. I the past I used a Bogen 3021 and grip action ball head, shown here. The tripod goes down pretty low, and the grip action head makes it easy to quickly position the camera and lens. I am currently using a newer setup with a side mounting support bar that lets the camera hover right at ground level. Another option is to carry a bean bag type support and just set the camera low to the ground.While there is not right or wrong angle of view to take on the flower, getting low to the ground can create more interesting compositions. The woodland wildflowers that I photograph in the spring are just inches tall, so getting low when photographing them means getting the camera just a few inches above ground level.   

• Lens Choice: A 100mm macro lens that can focus to full life sized magnification is ideal for photographing small woodland wildflowers. A 50mm macro can also work very well, and in tight spaces the closer working room of the shorter lens can be useful. Except for the very smallest of wildflowers I find that I usually shot at 1/2 life sized or greater. So a zoom lens with a macro focusing mode that lets you get that close, or near to it, may work well. The definition of "macro mode" for zooms is rather loose so if you are purchasing a lens and want to photograph small wildflowers, see how close your can really get. If you can fill half the screen or so with a dime, the lens should be OK for hepatica and other smaller flowers.

I personally use a 200mm macro lens, which is capable of focusing down to full life-sized. The lens is able to focus in on flower that is smaller than a dime, and still fill the frame with the image. It also affords a lot of working room – distance between the camera and the flower. That’s useful, particularly when it comes to controlling the lighting – if the camera is right on top of the subject, it’s difficult to control how the light hits the flower.

• Live view, focus peeking and articulated LCD's: Without a doubt, one of the best aids to wildflower photography is the ability to use live view to compose on the camera's LCD screen. While compact cameras have always had this feature, older DSLRs (and all film SLRs) lacked it. When the camera is mounted low to the ground, often in muddy conditions and tight working space, it can be difficult to compose looking through the finder. Composing on screen and using focus peaking to see exactly where the focal plane is greatly simplifies this task. Using depth of field preview with focus peaking gives a very accurate sense of what will and will not be sharp in the final exposure. And while my cameras do not have articulated LCD's, there's also no doubt that this feature would be beneficial when shooting in the field.
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  I think that sums up the basics of shooting wildflowers. Above all else, finding the flowers and being in the right place at the right time, is the key factor. Especially given how quickly the flowers come and go!

Once again today I ventured out to photograph the local spring wildflowers. As mentioned in past posts, conditions change quickly, and from day to day different species of wild flowers appear and disappear.

As the season unfolds the forest floor becomes more lush and green than ever – wild garlic, trillium, and anemones literally blanket the ground. A few new plants have emerged – wild ginger, bell wort, squirrel corn, and Canada Violet, to name a few. Hepatica – both blue and white – is now virtually gone. I saw two or three late bloomers, and lots of their foliage storing up energy for next year’s blooms. Trout Lilly is also fading fast – with only one or blooming plants to be found (though some areas of the forest floor are still covered with their patterned leaves. Even the spring beauty, which carpeted the ground last week, has thinned noticeably.

One flower that is noticeably absent is Jack In The Pulpit. I realized this morning that I have not seen a single one of these flowers this year, so devoted some time to looking for it. These flowers are pale green and tend to blend into the ground, so I expected that I had just overlooked them. Unfortunately, I found only one Jack this afternoon, and it was withered and weak looking. Maybe its been a bad year for Jack in the Pulpit, maybe the deer got them early. At any rate, it’s one plant that has eluded me yet this spring. Lastly, the riot of trillium has definitely started to fade. So I’ll leave this post with an image of a faded trillium bloom from this afternoon.

A few weeks ago I wrote a few comments about shooting with the wonderful plastic Holga. Here’s another Holga shot, this one taken a few weeks ago in a local nature preserve.

I have an 8x10 of this shot plastered on the bookcase in front of my desk here, and it’s been growing on me. I’m still not certain that I like the lower right corner – the flow there just doesn’t feel right – so I’ve been tweaking and playing with it, maybe someday to come up with an improvement. But I still like the overall feel of the photo. This small set of stairs branches off a well traveled path in the woods. Its leads down to a creek, and to a little spit of a trail (maybe just an animal trail) that seems to go nowhere. At least, when I followed it, it seemed to just peter out in the brush after a few hundred yards. This is truly a stairway to nowhere, and you have to wonder who took the time and effort to plant the railroad ties there to make it. Post exposure, I did a fair amount of dodging, burning, and toning in Photoshop – more or less just exaggerating what was already there. But the essence of the shot came from the Holga, and the uncanny way photos taken with it seem to edge off to the other side, just a bit.

I live in the city, and though I feed the birds the most frequent visitors are house sparrows, the occasional house finch or gold finch, plus a few local cardinals, jays, grackles, and starlings. A few years ago a white crowned sparrow made the scene for a while. It was a purely migratory visitor – southern Michigan lays between its summer range to the north and winter range to the south. But for a few years the white crowned appeared at the feeders, usually around Easter.

In the last few years I’ve heard the melodic song of a white throated sparrow for a few weeks each spring. Similar to the white crowned, it is a purely migratory visitor. Late this afternoon I heard the distinctive song of the white throated sparrow for the first time this season, and slipped out to try to grab a quick shot of it.

This image is the result of that effort – not bad but not very good. It’s a major crop out of the frame, and was shot hand-held using a long lens ( a sure way to get a less than tack sharp image.)

But the photo gives hope of a possibly more successful shot if the bird should decide to hang around for a while. So it’s time to dust off the big glass (it really has been too long) and get ready to try for a nice portrait of this migratory visitor!

Image details: shot with Pentax *ist-D, Tokina ATX 400mm f 5.6 @ f8, AF360FGZ flash for fill.

 I first blogged about spring wildflowers on April 7. At that time the forest floor was covered in leaves. Wild garlic had begun to appear, and the first few Hepatica were just starting to bloom.

I saw one or two bloodroot buds, just starting to open, and trout lily leaves were just coming out.  And here it is – April 20, not even two weeks later, and the face of the earth has changed. Gone are the hepatica, both blue and white. Gone too are the bloodroot, though their leaves have grown to be the size of a child’s hand. The last flowering trout lilies can be found only in low cool areas, soon to depart. Now the forest floor is all a riot of Spring Beauty, False Rue Anemone, and Trillium. Marsh marigold have emerged in the wetlands. And already the signs of the season’s end are at hand – a few faded trillium, and the emergence of Blue Eyed Mary, one of the later bloomingwoodland wildflowers.  

So it goes... M trip to the woods yesterday was again productive, although the current crop of flowers lack the diversity of the earlier species. While blue hepatica seems to manifest itself in all sorts of shades, shapes, and even numbers of petals; flowers like trillium, spring beauty, and blue eyed Mary are more alike than different. So while good shots are still possible, the degree of variation is limited. Last year, I missed most of the spring wildflower season. Dawdle a week or two, and it’s mostly gone. I’m glad that I was able to get out this year, and experience nature’s fast dance of early spring. A few more trips are in store for sure, and a quick hop an hour north, and there are places where the cycle is just starting, even as it closes out in other woods are this time. 

Technical details: all shots taken with Pentax *ist-D, SMC A* 200mm f4 macro.

Yesterday I ventured into the Allegan Forest. With 80 square miles of mixed fields, woods, wetlands, and oak savannas, it’s a great nature area. It’s the home of many species of wildlife, and white tailed deer, wild turkeys, coyotes, and numerous birds abound. 

On the flip side, it’s a somewhat unusual area – not nearly as pristine or wild as many other parks or forests. I’ve never researched the history of the area, but I’ve been told it is a patchwork of old farms and homesteads that failed in the early 20th century due to the poor, sandy soil. At any rate, you’d be hard pressed to find a large, old tree anywhere in all the 50,000 acres (at least I haven’t found any yet.) Instead you wll find acre after acre of mid sized trees, clear cut areas with barriers for hunters, remnants of hunting blinds and perches, and omnipresent spent shells, beer cans, and animal bones. 

It was slim pickings for wildflowers yesterday, though I was happy to find the ruined foundation of a small building tucked up on the top of hill near Swan Creek. That kept me busy for a while, working the area with the Pentax 6x7 and a roll of old Tri-X 320.  After hiking around Swan Creek and going on a few wild turkey chases (still looking for a good shot of one of those guys) I headed down to the Ottawa Marsh, looking for wildflowers. While the fields and oak savannas provide excellent habitat for late spring Lupine and summer Coreopsis, its slim pickings for hepatica and other wood land wildflowers (at least compared to areas about 30 miles south.) One area that does have some interesting wildflowers is the Ottawa Marsh. There, along the edges of the marsh, I found some white trout lily, the first shots of these plants I’ve gotten in my collection. Shooting them was a challenge – high gusty winds and brutal made it doubly awkward to hold a diffuser in place and get a shot of the flowers in those still moments between wind gusts. I’m not crazy about the photos of the lilies – I should of gotten a better angle on them in order to bring out the curve in the plant’s stem. But it was still a good day for getting a new subject, and reconnecting (after a long winter) to a great shooting area.

Technical details – Foundation Landscape taken with Pentax 6x7, SMC 67 55mm f4, TXP 320 developed in Rodinal, 1:50. White Trout Lily taken with *ist-D digital, A* 200mm macro f4, RAW mode.