C. reginae - Eshqua Bog - Vermont

[Joshua Szulecki]

On Tuesday I made my first pilgrimage up to Eshqua Bog in Vermont. The property is jointly owned and operated by The Nature Conservancy and the New England Wildflower Society, and is located a few minutes from Woodstock, Vermont, which is near the New Hampshire border. The site is a wet fen (not actually a bog) on a flat area, above a steep hill. Every year, people flock to Eshqua Bog for two weeks, when the Showy Ladyslippers (Cypripedium reginae) bloom.

When I first got there, there was a family in an RV dawdling around on the boardwalks that have been set up to allow safe access to the plants. They left quickly, and I got down to business. I found the tripod to be a limiting factor on the small boardwalk, and unwilling to lose tripod feet off a brand new tripod, I decided to handhold the whole time. When the sun peaked out this worked fine, but at times I lost dozens of shots due to poor lighting induced blur. I managed to get about 400 pictures, of which I've chosen to share 36 that I feel particularly well represent what I saw. Unfortunately, due to the long drive, none of the photographs are from anywhere other than the bog. Vermont is gorgeous, and if you haven't visited I highly recommend it.

Please feel free to critique my images, although I am not specifically requesting that you do so.

Gallery: http://www.szulecki.com/images/EshquaBog/

PS - I'm going to be shifting around my images (adding watermarks and reorganizing) for the next few days, so these may move. I'll update this post accordingly.

[cwhiker]

Joshua,
awesome photos my favorites are numbers  20,27,32. Glad to see you had some time away from studying

[Rob]

Josh, Fantastic Pic's! Some of your best in my opinion. Your New 40D seem to be a great companion for you, and seems to be aiding your already refined photography skills. Thanks for sharing.

[Joshua Szulecki]

Rob,

The 40D seems to be working out pretty well. The most noticable change is how much more accurate to the eye the RAW files are directly from the camera. Besides the DPP default sharpness boost**, those C. reginae pictures have had zero processing done to them. The RAW files have been substantially more close to what I would hope for, without any processing, than my 350D was providing. The larger VF and the better AF point placement are a gift for composition as well, as focus and recompose isn't required for golden rule/thirds rule composition, and MF is actually an option.

I'm really happy with this particular set, although I couldn't have asked for better weather. It was cloudy and sunny in spurts, so I got lots of interesting mixed lighting. The plants themselves are also VERY photogenic, especially compared to the C. acaule (Pink), because they are mostly smooth, have soft coloring, and most importantly, grow in lush areas as opposed to in acidic leaf litter, so the backgrounds are much more attractive.

CW,

I find 27 interesting in a non-asthetic sense, because it is so rare to see a photograph of these flowers before they open fully. I would say that about 25-50% of the flowers hadn't even opened yet, so I could potentially have gotten even better results a few days later, if I was willing to chance the weather being different.

[Joshua Szulecki]

Btw... I actually ordered prints of these.

[cwhiker]

what lab did you use? I just got two 16x20's of waterfalls from the Clifty Creek area. I used Mpix.com

[Joshua Szulecki]

I just got some 4x6's from Kodak's online processing. You really need to watch them like a hawk, because they put processing on by default, which is obviously good for marketing but bad for me.