Scribbles and Snaps

So far, we’ve had three (sic!) sunny and relatively warm days this spring, and I spent two of them in our local botanical garden armed with my Nikon D90 and the lightweight budget macro combo.

Despite the unusually rough (even by Danish standards) spring, there were a handful of blooming flowers, including Saxifraga arendsii. These are not the most spectacular flowers in the botanical garden, but they are pretty in their own unassuming way.

I processed the photo in digiKam using a few techniques described in the digiKam Recipes ebook. The photo is published on Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saxifraga_Arendsii.jpeg

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I took this photo using my Nikon D90 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor lens. The RAW file has been processed in digiKam. I applied the cross-process effect (as described in the digiKam Recipes ebook) and sharpened the final result a bit.

Basic EXIF info:
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter speed: 1/640s
ISO: 400

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alpine_Violets_Shallow_DOF_(Closeup).jpg

The California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is a perennial and annual plant, native to the United States, and the official state flower of California.

It can grow 5-60 cm tall, with alternately branching glaucous blue-green foliage. The leaves are ternately divided into round, lobed segments. The flowers are solitary on long stems, silky-textured, with four petals, each petal 2-6 cm long and broad; their color ranges from yellow to orange, and flowering is from February to September. The petals close at night or in cold, windy weather and open again the following morning, although they may remain closed in cloudy weather. The fruit is a slender dehiscent capsule 3-9 cm long, which splits in two to release the numerous small black or dark brown seeds. It is perennial in mild parts of its native range, and annual in colder climates; growth is best in full sun and sandy, well-drained, poor soil.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Poppy
Full-size version and further info: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eschscholzia_californica_(Shallow_DOF).jpg

I’m writing this on the train heading home from Berlin — the coolest city in Europe, if you ask me. Visiting Berlin is always something I look forward to: my mom lives there, and there is always something interesting going on in the city.

This time, it was the Festival of Lights — an annual event when many landmarks and buildings are lit using all kinds of creative lighting. This was also the first time I decided to do some serious photographing — now that I’m the proud owner of a Nikon D60 DSLR. As you would expect from a first-timer, I made a few beginner’s mistakes. The most grave one was the decision to pack a Velbon CX Mini instead of a “full-size” tripod. Since D60 lacks the live preview feature, I literally had to crawl on all fours when composing a shot. On the positive side, I found the Nikkor 18-55mm VR kit lens extremely versatile, so much so that I decided to postpone purchasing additional lenses for the time being. To be honest, I don’t think that my night photo walks yielded any decent photos, but it was a valuable learning experience.

The next item on my todo list was a visit to Berlin’s botanic garden. I’ve been there before with the missus, but I had only my point-and-shoot with me, and one of the most interesting pavilions was closed for renovation. This time, I spent almost four hours shooting flowers, but I did have a few problems in the process. Firstly, as soon as I walked into a green house with tropical plants, the lens became covered with condensation, and I had to wait 15-20 minutes before I could use my camera. So here is my question: Is there any way to avoid or mitigate condensation? The botanic garden has an excellent collection of cacti. Unfortunately, the most interesting ones were behind the glass, and I’d like to hear your tips and tricks on shooting through the glass. Despite all these annoyances, I managed to take over two hundred photos. I used RawTherapee to transfer photos to my laptop and quickly review them.

Speaking of the laptop, I planned to take a netbook on my trip, but it turned out that RawTherapee (or any of my favorite photo applications) was pretty unusable on the small screen. So I had to pack my HP production laptop. When going through my photos from the botanic garden, I realized that I made another mistake: I didn’t write down the names of the flowers I photographed. Now all of them go by names like “pretty flower”, “yellow flower”, “flower that looks like a star”, and so on. So next time, I have to remember to write down the name of each plant I photograph, or — even better — take a picture of the sign with info about the plant.

All in all, the trip was a success. Despite a couple of rookie mistakes, I’m heading home with an SD card chock-full of photos and a few valuable lessons. I’ll be slowly posting photos from my trip to Berlin on my Flickr page, so stay tuned.