jeudi 29 mars 2007

Snowdrifts of Plum Tree Blossom... And pausing for a Comma When I photographed, wrote about and posted the "Early Morning Blossom" weblog entry a couple of days ago I didn't know the type of fruit nor tree I was describing... the article was more to do with photography, and seeing, rather than botany. There had been a ground frost that morning, after a cloudless night, so after the photo-outing I stayed indoors with the comfort of a log fire to cheer me up. But by mid-afternoon the temperature had risen and I was out on the terrace, shirt off to feel the warmth on my skin, trying to solve a "diabolical" Sudoku mentally... that is, without noting down the numerical possibilities, only the certainties, in each blank square as I progress. Distracted by the difficulty of the latter I took a mental break and noticed there were an unusual number of butterflies and bees on the warm breeze... my eyes followed the erratic flight of one particularly striking Comma as it fluttered between the still largely bare shrubs and trees in the orchard. Trees bare, that is, apart from a couple covered in a carpet of blossom. Although we had stayed at the same property last Winter - those trees had not been in flower then and I hadn't been so aware of them this time around until now. What made them so visually different over the past couple of days was that they looked to be covered in snow... the clumps of blossom being so thick on the branches. There is something very attractive about this particular member of the Vanessid family, polygonia c-album, it's tattered-looking wings... almost looking as if it has been dragged through a hedge backwards. However, the dull undersides of the wings make a perfect camouflage when the adult butterfly hibernates over Winter... it's carefully folded form giving the appearance of a dead leaf. I watched the Comma settle to feed on the uppermost branch of one tree... and grabbed my camera bag. Alternating between a 300mm AF Nikkor and a manual 500mm Nikkor-Reflex mirror lens mounted on a Nikon D200 I was able to keep track of the subject quite easily - although accurate focus was more difficult. The butterfly had settled in the uppermost branches about 25 feet above the ground. The main image is about half of the captured frame with the 300mm lens (remember that is the equivalent of 450mm on a digital Nikon D200 with a x1.5 crop factor). So half the captured image equates to roughly what a 600mm lens (900mm equivalent on a 35mm film camera) would see. The EXIF data for the image tells me the exposure was 1/200th of a second at f/8, the camera settings being ISO 100 with +0.3 Exposure Value dialled-in. The shots for the 500mm lens show 1/180th of a second at the fixed aperture (for that lens) of f/8. The only way to keep such camera and long lens combinations steady at exposures less than the reciprocal of their focal lengths (i.e. it is recommended to shoot at 1/500th of a second minimum when using a 500mm lens... 1/100th of a second for a 100mm lens, and so on) is to use a tripod. But a tripod is too limited in manoeuvrability when photographing a moving subject... which is why I increasingly use a monopod as part of my camera set-up. And, better still, both my 300mm and 500mm Nikkor lenses have very sturdy rotating tripod collars attached... so I am able to quickly realign the camera, at 90 degree click-stop settings, between horizontal and vertical shots. I bought a Gitzo "Basalt" monopod from Robert White in the UK because he could supply this French manufactured product at a better price, and sooner, than from a dealer in it's country of origin... where I live! US-based photographers will probably find Robert's Gitzo prices hard to better too. The Plum - which I will always recognise in future after reading-up on the blossom shown here - has many forms and varieties... my favourite being the Mirabelle, which I have never seen growing in England, but is common in France. It was probably cultivated for Europe soils by the Romans, from Anatolia Caucasus origins. Shakespeare refers to cultivated Plums, Prunes and Damsons and many gardens of his time must have contained a large variety of those fruits. One of his contemporaries, Gerard, wrote in his "Herball" (1597)... "To write of Plums particularly would require a peculiar volume... Every clymate hath his owne fruite, far different from that of other countries; my selfe have threescore sorts in my garden, and all strange and rare; there be in other places many more common, and yet yearly commeth to our hands others not before knowne." Plum Blossom Tree Giclee Print 25 in. x 42 in. Buy at AllPosters.com Framed   Mounted 9:59:48 PM    comment []