Poppy photography

Photographically speaking, my favourite flower is the poppy. I think they make great subjects for the camera and there are plenty of different varieties too. I love seeing those fields of red as you drive around the country and then trying to find my way to them for a spot of photography.

Last week, I made a forum post on ePHOTOzine asking if anyone had spotted a poppy field within a decent driving distance of Peterborough. Anyway, I got loads of responses so thanks to everyone who made the effort, including a location within a ten minutes drive.

I went there yesterday evening to have a play. Getting to the location described by danielwaters was pretty accurate and right beside the road too and I managed to squeeze the car just off the road. Obviously you have to take care when driving looking for a poppy field and parking up.


Gear
I took my Nikon D700, tripod and a bag of lenses including a Tamron SP 90mm f/2.8 and a Nikon 200-400mm. I added a Lens Baby Composer and a Manfrotto 055 carbon-fibre tripod fitted with a ball head.

Technique
I left it rather late so I ended up with about 30 minutes photography time, but at least the sun was shining bright.I did most shots with the Nikon 200-400mm lens because I wanted to compress perspective and layer colours. The only problem with this lens shooting into the light was flare. The supplied lens hood is deep but even so, I had to use a sheet of card held in place by a Wimberley Plamp to shield the lens more to avoid the problem.

The image shown here was a Raw file processed through Adobe Lightroom and then put through Alien Skin's Exposure 2 using the Fujichrome Velvia 50 preset. I then boosted the colours even in more.