Sometime, landscape images just fall into your lap. You turn a corner or walk over the crest a hill and there it is, just waiting for your to press the shutter. Sadly this doesn't happen often. There's usually a great deal of planning and observation required to get the perfect picture. Poppies can generally be seen to two settings - in large fields spanning what seems like huge vistas, or just the occasional plant by the side of the road or amongst crops in a farmers field. Both offer exciting photographic opportunities in their own way and allow us to capture very different images of the famous little flower.
Subject: Poppies
My ARPS panel was a collection of 15 photographs of poppies ranging from close-ups to landscapes of red with everything in between. Stumbling across 5 large fields filled with poppies is inspiring and requires a minute to take in. As with much of my photography, I start by looking at the big picture capturing as much of the scene as possible. Wide-angle lenses come into their own here and allow some really high-impact pictures. Fields of poppies can look stunning on sunny days. The mixture of brilliant red, vivid greens and striking blues work so well together, creating real impact. Before long, I find myself looking closer and trying to spot individual subjects and isolating them from the background. The "looking" part of this is key and is what allows photographers to take pictures that most people just walk past. Spend time seeing what's around you, thinking about the flower and how it will work with the background. Clumps of poppies often work well and sometimes you may find a group that is raised slightly above surrounding poppies making them naturally stand out.
I'm a great lover of long lenses for close-up flowers. Using these can really compress a scene and isolate a subject, offering a different feel to a macro lens. It's hard to visualise what you'll see until you look through a long lens so try it out and look around, changing the focus position to narrow the depth-of-field. Macro lenses are also a must for this sort of work, offering a more classic "look". Experiment with different viewpoints and parts of the flower and don't forget to include just the petals if you have a lens which allows you to do this.
