Late May is when the magenta flowers of Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) bloom. Ponemah Bog in New Hampshire is a favorite location of mine to photograph Rhodora. Ponemah is a kettle hole bog, where big chunks of glacial ice were left stranded on the landscape as the glaciers receded. The ice subsequently melted, leaving a pond, and eventually a bog. This bog is also home to lots of other interesting flora, such a pitcher plants.
My composition was somewhat constrained by where the best section of Rhodora was located. I was also limited to shooting from a wooden boardwalk that goes through the bog. The background was a bit busy, but I tried to make the black spruce trees as organized as possible.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any critique or comments are welcome
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Canon 5D MK4, Canon 70-200mm f4 lens, at 121 mm, ISO 200, 0.3 sec at f16
And for an interesting perspective on the evolution of color photography, here is a link to an image by Eliot Porter - “Rhodora New Hampshire 1953”. Porter was perhaps one the first nature photographers to specialize in doing “small scenes” intimate landscapes in color. I came across this while googling for the Rhodora species name in Latin to include in my post.
Ah that takes me back. I was a Ponemah bog regular (it’s amazing in winter, too) and used to work just a few miles from there for many years. It’s a seriously great place and the blueberries practically fall into your bucket.
Considering how limited your options are there, I think you did a great job with presenting how lush and layered a bog environment is. A scroll crop eliminating the orange pine needles in the URC is interesting. Did you use a polarizer for this? The green leaves have a shine on them that breaks up the intensity pretty well. Makes me want to revisit my shots from that area. How’s the water level these days?
I did use a polarizer for this shot, for example the lichen and dark bark on the black spruce would have had much more sheen if I had not. The shine on the green leaves is perhaps from a little filtered sunlight, the clouds were starting to burn off. Would you change the processing of the greens, I’m not sure if your comment on their intensity is suggesting that or not?
The water level at Ponemah has essentially been pretty similar for the past 5 or 6 years, perhaps a bit lower this year since we have had very little rain in April and May of 2021.
Sorry to be unclear…I think the shine is an asset in this case. Dense foliage can be an overwhelming block of color if the polarizer is cranked too much IMO. It removes the delicacy and the variation found in a single species or instance of plants. I sometimes am guilty of that. With scenes like this one that are about the foliage it’s important to finesse the result - intensity of color without overwhelming detail. I think you threaded the needle pretty well.
Agreed, one thing about polarizers is not to get tempted into cranking them to max polarization, and rather using some restraint and backing them off a bit. Often true for blue skies as well as foliage.
Can you tell by looking at the changes in the histogram when the polarizer is fully engaged and when it’s not? If so, then explain. I sometimes don’t see much change when I turn the polarizer and would like to be able to tell from the histogram.
I’m not certain about this, but on wet foliage, polarization would help dampen specular highlights. However these areas would be so small from a real estate perspective that it may be very hard to detect changes on the right side of the histogram. I just eyeball it on wet foliage, it often needs some polarization but you don’t want to kill the sheen either. Reflections are like this too, over-polarizing them can kill the vitality of them.
But it’s much easier to see over-polariztion of skies, which is very obvious.
