Orchid Show No. 4

PAPHIOPEDILUM ORCHID, CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN, GLENCOE, ILLINOIS, FEBRUARY 27, 2016

Pentax K-01
Pentax 35mm f2.4
1.5 sec. f22
ISO 200

I bought this Lady's Slipper Orchid from a vendor at the Botanic Garden's annual Orchid Show, took it home, and set it up on the dining room table with a black velvet background and the camera on a tripod. Using a poor man's photo studio is a lot easier than trying to find a good subject in the wild.

Orchid Show No. 3

ORCHID, CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN, GLENCOE, ILLINOIS, FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Pentax K-01
Sigma 18-250 macro at 105mm
1 sec. f11
ISO 200

This specimen (I don't know the variety either) "doesn't look right," Debby said when she saw it on my computer monitor. The odd red splotches do look as if they're out of focus, but they're not. One of the tough things about Jack Carlson's orchid photography class is that we must shoot only the flowers that are displayed in the Orchid Show, as if they're in the wild. No setting up of individual blooms in the studio is allowed. That forces us to use our camera controls to the utmost.

Orchid Show No. 2

ORCHID, CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN, GLENCOE, ILLINOIS, FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Pentax K-01
90mm Tamron macro with 1.4x Pentax extender (126mm)
1/10 sec. f8
ISO 200

A longer shot of the same orchid (it's on the bottom) in yesterday's offering.

Orchid Show No. 1

ORCHID, CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN, GLENCOE, ILLINOIS, FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Pentax K-3
90mm Tamron macro with 1.4x Pentax extender (126mm) and off-camera flash
1/6 sec. f11
ISO 200

This was taken for Jack Carlson's orchid photography class, held in conjunction with the annual Orchid Show at Chicago Botanic Garden. It was a tough assignment because he ordered no post processing or cropping, forcing his students to do all their artistry with the camera alone. That teaches patience and discipline. (No idea what variety this specimen is.)

Spider Island Bridge

SPIDER ISLAND BRIDGE, CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN, GLENCOE, ILLINOIS, NOVEMBER 28, 2015

Pentax K-3
Pentax 18-135 at 18mm
1/320 sec. f13
ISO 1600

Sometimes a cloudy-day photo with overly muted colors works better as a black-and-white. I chose a high ISO and a very small aperture in order to get sharpness throughout the depth of field and enough shutter speed to overcome my shaky hands.

Winter at the Garden

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS: CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN, GLENCOE, ILLINOIS, NOVEMBER 22, 2015

Pentax K-3
Pentax 18-135mm
ISO 100

1/80 sec f11 60mm

1/200 sec. f11 78mm

1/40 sec. f18 40mm

The first snow of the season had come to the Garden the day before—heavy and wet, followed by an overnight plunge in temperature into the teens. Normally I'm not a landscape photographer, but these scenes were too striking to pass up.

Great Blue

GREAT BLUE HERON, CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN, GLENCOE, ILLINOIS, NOVEMBER 1, 2015

Pentax K-3
90mm Tamron macro plus 1.4x Pentax extender (126mm)
1/320 sec. f9
ISO 400

Just as the Garden opened this morning at 8, this Great Blue posed nicely just outside the Welcome Center. The low morning light resulted in saturated colors, which I muted using Lightroom to make the bird pop out of the foliage. I wish I had had a 300mm telephoto to cut down the range, but the Tamron-and-extender combination on the K-3 gave sufficient sharpness that allowed some pretty hard cropping of the image.

Footbridge

FOOTBRIDGE, CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN, GLENCOE, ILLINOIS, OCTOBER 25, 2015

Pentax K-3

90mm Tamron macro plus 1.4x Pentax extender (126mm)

1/1600 sec. f10

ISO 1600

In the original frame, power wires and a large building marred the background. Cropping top and bottom hard and turning the photograph into a faux panoramic shot improved things.