Poppy Silhouette
Another post from behind the anti-deer mesh, with no mesh showing. This time I feature silhouettes of bees collecting pollen from a poppy. I found it quite striking that sometimes I could detect the colour of the bee’s wings projected onto and through the backlit petal. There was constant movement, and it reminded me of a natural Javanese shadow puppet show.
You can get a sense of that dance performance in the animated GIF below. Sorry if it is a bit slow to load, it is hard to keep size down with animations. There is a chance it might not display on screens narrower than 1024 pixels (I find I have to post them exactly the size they were created or they don’t work). Let me know if, after a reasonable amount of time for downloading a 2.4 megabyte file, there is no animation visible for you, and what device you are viewing on, I want to make these things work properly.
You can see other posts in the deer fencing series here. I will show some bee pictures taken from the other side of this flower in a future post (here). More of this silhouetted poppy, without bees and much closer in, can be found here.
.
.
.
.
.
Canon EOS 5D MkII, Canon EF 100mm/f2.8 macro lens, ISO100, f2.8. Animation compiled from 10 images taken within one minute. The stills are from a different series taken a few minutes apart. All images hand-held taken with the purpose of capturing the best silhouette, not with animation in mind. Therefore they required cropping to get a similar distance and location. Not perfect, but better than I expected when the idea first occurred to me.
.
.
burnt embers 
Ohhhh, these are sweet! Really love the silhouette of the bee, just awesome!
LikeLike
Thanks David. The lighting was perfect for this shadow show.
LikeLike
I ended up in this entry from your latest posting. Poppies are photogenic right from the start, but this is an approach that makes the photographs interesting beyond their prettiness. I like all the photographs, especially the animation. By the way the GIF image works like a hot damn on both computer and my telephone.
LikeLike
Thank you Joseph. Poppies are photogenic, even when gone to seed. I am glad you also found them interesting. And thank you for the technological testing, it is good to know it works on a phone too. They are quite a lot of work, and it would be shame to put them out there if they were not working on all platforms.
LikeLike
Pingback: Gathering of Pollen | burnt embers
Great shots Ehpem! The animation worked fine on my MAC desktop.
LikeLike
Thank you David, for the compliment and the information about your computer. I am now wondering about mobile devices, will have to ask one of my sons to check I suppose.
LikeLike
I think the unusual viewpoint works very well here.
LikeLike
Thanks Melinda – these poppies are in a raised bed (mid/upper-thigh level) and are then quite tall plants, so they were up quite high were I could more easily notice that this was going on.
LikeLike
But, if they’d been lower, you would have crawled under them to get the shots? Through mud, maybe? Just for your loyal followers? Yes?
LikeLike
If they had been lower I would not have seen the possibilities. Which means maybe I should be adding one of those bomb searching mirrors-on-a-stick to my photo-kit, so I don’t miss these interesting events.
Drawback: If seen using it, I might get a rep as paranoid, or worse. “Bombs under flowers? The man’s a nutter!”
LikeLike
Be honest: is there just the *slightest* possibility that you already have a bit of a reputation?
LikeLike
That is a trick question. There is the *slightest* possibility for just about anything to be true. So, I won’t answer it. :p
LikeLike
Love these shots, Ehpem! The backlighting of the color and shadows from the stamens makes the translucence so delicate and delicious. The animation worked fine on my laptop.
LikeLike
Hi Lynn – thanks for the feedback and I am glad you like these photos. There are so many ways to look at a flower, but this is one that is not usually offered to us unless the blossoms are at eye level or higher.
These poppies really look very different from the opposite direction – much of that delicacy is gone, and all of the translucence. I will post some examples in a few days.
LikeLike