Snake’s head covered with frost catching the first rays of sun light. ISO 400 - 180 mm - f/3.5 - 1/1000 sec.
The Snake’s head flowers are one of my favorite spring bloomers. Unfortunately, these beautiful flowers are not available in my local patch “Het Reggedal”. For these flowers I have to drive three quarters of an hour to “Het Vechtdal” nearby Zwolle. The place where you can find these beautiful flowers is not special with a lot of noice of trucks and cars in the background and in the area orange-red ditches with a high iron content. Below is an image of one of the ditches.
The ditch with the orange red color with a Snake’s head flower covered in frost.
Behind the scenes
For the images I use my Manfrotto tripod with center console that I use upside down so that the camera is placed under the tripod, see photo on the left. I also take quite some distance from the flower and place my 180 mm macro lens as low as possible in the frozen/dewy grass. This low position creates a nice soft foreground with a slightly bluish glow caused by the frost on the grass. By shuffling the setup a bit and using live view to assess the composition and the softness of the image, I arrange quite some time until I am satisfied. In addition to make the composition, you also need some luck, especially with the light on the flower. When the latter doesn't quite work out, I try my luck with the next flower.
When I photograph the Snake’s head flowers, the cold nights with frost and dew are my favorite ingredients, this means setting the alarm early (4.30 AM) to be at the spot well before sunrise. I need this early time to find some nice flowers to photograph them around sunrise or shortly after. The first rays of the sun on the flower and the warm background through the orange-red of the ditch are my ingredients for a beautiful image. The finishing touch is the wallpaper scissor with which I can carefully remove blades of grass that do not fit into the composition. This means that you cannot take very many images in the half hour before sunrise until about 2 hours after sunrise.
Beautiful colors of the ditch in the background and a Snake’s head covered with dew. ISO 100 - 180 mm - f/3.5 - 1/125 sec.