What to do when the wind is blowing gusts and the flowers are dancing? Go with it!! The owl’s clover, poppies, goldfields, and grasses galore were being buffeted by winds in Antelope Valley on Monday, March 27th, so there was no hope of capturing and close-ups, and even the landscape with a strong foreground up close was not going to happen. When this occurs, you are required to throw out all the plan A’s, B’s, etc., you had and come up with a new idea.
Thankfully, I had one. I loved the dance of the flowers as I watched them move in the wind – as if choreographed to music. To recreate that, I used a favorite technique of mine, intentional camera motion (ICM), and so I set my shutter to 1/10 sec, and panned vertically, letting the wind move things side to side as I went up with the camera. If I moved too fast, the wind effect wasn’t there, so it took a lot of attempts to get a few that I loved, but as the saying goes, ‘you only need one’ and I have more than one that I like. The main post image is a favorite, but I like the different effect in the one below, too.
It’s a great day when you have enough good ones that you have to pick and choose!
Thanks for visiting and happy Spring!
I like both but the top one is my fave. What a great idea to try! Hope you are well! We are heading back to cold WI. after a vacation in FLA.
Hi Sue,
Thanks for your choice of faves. Mine too! I hope Florida was good in spite of the fact that you have to return to the cold. What a shock that would be! I returned from the deserts of AZ and southern CA to a colder blustery few days but nothing like the transition you are making!
A good lesson for us. It was windy in Valley of Fire also, but we had lots of interesting rocks to photograph, which were not moving. Of the two you posted, my favorite is the top one. Lovely.
Thank you David. The first (top) image is my favorite, too. They are all so different, still looking through them to make final, final decisions for prints.
YES, Valley of Fire doesn’t move much, except for the sand, gosh darn sand gets everywhere! Keep those sensors cleaned…and thanks for visiting/commenting.