Irides, June 22nd

A flowering Tall Bearded Wild Jasmine Iris in the light of the setting sun in a private garden. Captured with a Canon 7D with 70-200/2.8L IS II + 1.4 TC III in manual mode at ISO200, f/9.0, and 1/25th of a second. The camera was mounted on a Gitzo 3540XLS and Induro GHB2 gimbal head with custom long lens support.

A friend invited me to come and create some images of his more than two thousand irides near Lockwood, Montana. The summer snuck up on us, so I was a few days late to catch the bulk of the flowers at their peek; but I was there soon enough to catch the tail end. We planned the shoot for the time just before sunset, allowing these magical colors. Reflectors were used both to reflect light; but also to try and block the wind. We also used a plamp to hold the stem to allow for the needed exposure length without loosing detail to motion blur.

I had a great time, and hope to visit next year right at the peek and create many more images of these beautiful flowers.

Make the jump to go through the online gallery, I ask that you leave comments/criticism or at least give your favorites a thumbs up... THANKS!

If you have questions, ask... I published the camera information with each image and have added full keywords to share just about anything you would want to know about the images.

Happy shooting

p.s. Did you know that the plural of Iris was Irides (not Irises)?