Flower Photo Technics

I've been asked several times how to create the dark background behind many of the desert flower pics I take and my usual answer is, "It depends."

It depends on the time of day, it depends on your camera settings and, ultimately, it depends on your camera and the adjustments it will allow. The key to getting these results is the use of spot metering as opposed to metering in wide area mode.

The simplest solution is illustrated by the photo of the Palmer penstemon (top left). Flash is used on a camera with through-the-lense (TTL) metering. Spot exposure aimed at the bright flower will produce a sharp subject against an unlit background.

Another technique is equally simple. Again using spot metering, focus on the brightest part of a white, or very bright, element of the flower. If your camera offers the feature, partially depress the shutter release button to hold the exposure and focus while you better frame the subject. Auto exposure will close down the aperture (and speed up the shutter) so that a darker background will result in a high-contrast picture. The prickle poppy (middle left) jumps out of its background with no distracting elements.

It's always fun to experiment and see what you get. Digital cameras give you the freedom to produce nearly any effect you want and also the pitfalls that go with it. In this case, the danger is in the tendency for all your flower photos to have a guidebook quality...good only in moderation.

It Always Fascinates Me . . .

. . . how plants maintain their niche in the desert environment by evolving to accept only certain pollinators and then only at particular times of the year. Bees, birds, bats and nearly everything small and mobile in the desert play a part in this ongoing drama.

The first hints come when you approach a flower and see that nearly always there is some form of life scrambling through the anthers, stamen, corolla and calyx. Fortunately, most are so intent on their occupation they don't notice that a giant w/camera has approached.

I go through this scenario frequently when taking photos for Cactus PhotoGraphics or for my website, www.cactusphotographics.com.

Flower petals and sepals are shaped to encourage and accept certain pollinators and reject others. Shape doesn't affect the spiders, for example, but it has a marked affect on whether bees, hummingbirds, bats and moths get in on the action. The Thurber gilia is a good example. Its pale lavender flowers are the wrong color to be noticed by hummingbirds and its tubes are too long for the hummingbirds to feed effectively. But this flower is an ideal food source for night fliers such as hawkmoths.

The evolutionary tricks are endless. The wild bean, for example, sports two-sided petals which serve as a convenient landing pad for bees that need to perch when they gather pollen. In contrast, the scarlet penstemon provides no such foothold and is a color that bees can't see...but alternately provides a perfect food source for hummingbirds that quickly distinguish reds and hover while feeding.

Cactus flowers, in particular, bloom when specific pollinators are seasonally abundant and active either nocturnally or during the daytime. Bats and hawkmoths aren't active during daylight hours but there are, nonetheless, cactus flowers open at night just for them. By opening for only a few hours early in the day, certain other flowers encourage bees...which have a well developed sense of time...to arrive faithfully for nectar and pollen.

Probably the "largest" of these adapters is the saguaro cactus which has flowers that stay open for only about 36 hrs. (including the night following daytime bloom) and is pollinated by birds, bees and nectar-feeding bats. Timing for these desert giants is critical. Pollination and later seed dispersal is timed for the summer rains which follow shortly thereafter.

Pollination takes place either actively or passively. While some common pollinators are actively looking for pollen, others are seeking only nectar, pollinating passively as they search for the nectar. Flowers are selective, however, about which they allow.

Bees, for example, don't have a chance in hell of reaching the nectar in some flowers because they have short or non-existent tongues. Hawkmoths and certain butterflies, in contrast, have probosces which extend a full 1 1/2 to 2 in. to reach the nectar in other flowers such as columbine, gilia, and others.

What does all this go to show?...probably nothing of significance except that when you set out to take pictures of the sex organs of plants, you meet the strangest creatures. Sex and cameras have always gone together so I'm never surprised at what I see. Often it's only in photographic "post production", as the journals call it, when cactus flowers are enlarged to two or three times life-size that I see the bees, bugs and spiders that have crept into the camera's frame.

Welcome to the Future

"...the West’s energy boom could threaten drinking water for 1 in 12 Americans," says Climate Ark in a piece taken from the Dec. 22, 2008, edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune. In the article authors Abrahm Lustgarten and David Hasemyer, point to the everyday requirements of crop irrigation, power generation, and the ever increasing needs of domestic oil, gas, and uranium supplies.

"The river's water is hoarded the moment it trickles out of the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado and begins its 1,450-mile journey to Mexico's border," they continue. "It runs south through seven states and the Grand Canyon, delivering water to Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. Along the way, it powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation's crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans."

"Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future."

"The region could contain more oil than Alaska's National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. It has the richest natural gas fields in the country. And nuclear energy, viewed as a key solution to the nation's dependence on foreign energy, could use the uranium deposits held there."

"But getting those resources would suck up vast quantities of the river's water and could pollute what is left. That's why those most concerned are water managers in places like Los Angeles and San Diego. They have the most to lose."

"The river is already so beleaguered by drought and climate change that one environmental study called it the nation's "most endangered" waterway. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography warn the river's reservoirs could dry up in 13 years."

As it is, the river diminishes to a swamp at the head of the Gulf of California. Some years it doesn't get that far.

In an oblique twist, this was forecast by Charles Bowden in his book, Killing the Hidden Waters, first published in 1977...over 30 years ago. Looking at ground water as a non-renewable resource because it was being used at a rate greater than it could be replaced or, stated differently, would take ages to re-collect in underground aquifers, he lamented its reckless and wasteful use. In 1977 he likely never guessed that surface water would suffer the same fate.

However, in a new introduction to this book written 2003, Bowden issues a stark warning:

"We can ignore these facts. We can pretend these facts do not matter. But in the end, they will slap us in the face and we will have to snap alert. And this slap may come from our kitchen faucet, or from the pump at the gas station, or from the electricity thrumming into our homes, or from the supermarket or from our local lumberyard. But it will come."

"Welcome to the future, the place that will make us face the experiences of our past.