Photography Links – July 31, 2009

Lots of links this week – since I didn’t get a links post done last week.

Plagiarism Today has Battling Copyrigh Ignorance

PhotoAttorney has Quick Links, Rights Grabs and Updates, Is Taking, Selling and Publishing Images of Hunting, Fishing or Trapping Illeagal, Quicklinks from Around the World and Identifying Website Owners for Copyright Infringement Claims

Stuck in Customs has a review of Genuine Fractals

Photofocus has What to Look for In the Background

DCShutterbugs has a list of August DC Area Photo Meetups

Photo Business News and Forum has The Real New Frugality – Time Style

Dan Heller has Photography and the Public Domain part 1

Luminous Landscape has Mountain Climbing Photography

PhotoWalkPro has Photography in Broad Daylight

Your Photo Tips has Your Photographic Style

LightStalking has a Low Light Photography Tutorial

Virtual Photography Studio has How to Find A Great Tripod and From Amateur to Professional: 7 Steps that Will Get You There

Elk in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

One of my goals for my recent trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was to see the elk. In 2001, elk were reintroduced to the Smoky Mountains. The new herd was started with 25 elk from the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. Since then, the herd has grown to almost 100 elk. Most of the elk can be found in the Cataloochee region of the park.

So last Tuesday morning,  I was waiting at the gate for the road out to the meadows to open. Within minutes, I saw several large bull elk out in the field! They are incredible to see. Be sure to check out the racks of antlers on these bull elks.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

That morning, I also saw a few female elk off in the distance in one of the other fields. I wasn’t able to photograph them.

But I was still really happy with the photos I had taken – and I’d seen the elk in the wild!

The next morning, I was at the Mountain Farm Museum at the Oconaluftee Entrance to the park. As I was photographing Holly, the extremely friendly barn cat, I saw what I thought was the biggest deer I’d ever seen walking across the field. It never occurred to me that it was another elk – since I thought the elk were only at Cataloochee – and this animal didn’t have any eartags or a radio collar.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

After a while, the “deer” wandered off and eventually came back and entered into the farm area. This next photo should have made it peferctly clear that this wasn’t a large white tailed deer.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

I think was checking out the exhibits at the Mountain Farm Museum. He then wandered over to the fruit trees for a snack.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Then he decided it was time to visit the garden for a bite to eat. He has a green leaf from the garden in his mouth in this next photo.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

For the next few minutes, the elk grazed at the garden and walked around the Mountain Farm Museum, posing nicely in a few spots.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Finally, after a last visit to the fruit trees for a bite to eat, the elk headed off into the woods as more people started arriving at the Mountain Farm Museum.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

I arrived at the Mountain Farm Museum shortly after 7 AM and was photographing for over an hour. For most of that time, I was the only person there. It was wonderful.

Later that same day, I was at Cades Cove and saw some white tailed deer – and that’s when I began to wonder if I’d really been photographing a large deer that morning. After checking with some people on Twitter and Facebook, I found at that some of the elk have migrated to the Cherokee/Oconaluftee area.

On Thursday, I spoke with one of the park rangers, who confirmed that yes it was an elk I had photographed. She was able to identify him as one of the male yearling elk born last year. She had a bit of a laugh when she saw one of the photos – apparently the elk aren’t supposed to go into the Mountain Farm Museum area – much less eat the fruit off the trees or snack from the garden!

Seeing and photographing the elk at Great Smoky Mountains National Park was amazing. They are beautiful animals. They can also be very dangerous – they are big – and if they see you as a threat you can be seriously injured by an elk. Park regulations require that people stay at least 50 yards away from the elk. All of my photos were taken from a distance using my 100-400mm lens at 400mm. The photos are all crops of the original images.

If you get a chance to visit the Smoky Mountains, be sure to try to see the elk. They are magnificent!

More Smoky Mountain Wildflowers

I just got back from another wonderful week of photographing wildflowers along the Blue Ridge Parkway and in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I came home with about 130 GB of photos – so it’s going to take me a while to get them weeded and edited.

One of the wonderful aspects of spring wildflowers in the Smoky Mountains is the incredible combinations of wildflowers that can be seen growing together in the park. In January, I posted a few photos of wildflower combinations from my 2008 trip. Here are some of my favorite combinations of wildflowers from my April 2009 trip to Tennessee.

First is a hillside of yellow trillium (trillium luteum) and purple phacelia (phacelia bipinnatifida). The Yellow Trillium are found throughout the Smoky Mountains. I found this patch surrounded by purple phacelia along River Road.

Yellow Trillium and Purple Phacelia (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Next is a patch of crested dwarf irises (iris cristata)  and star chickweed (stellaria pubera) around the base of a tree. I photographed these flowers along the side of the road in the Greenbrier section of the Smokies, just before the start of the Old Settlers Trail.

Crested Dwarf Irises and Star Chickweed (c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Finally, a showy orchis (galearis spectabilis) in front of a patch of crested dwarf irises (iris cristata) along the Ash Hopper Trail.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

I hope my photos can give you a sense of the incredible beauty of the wildflowers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I’ve fallen totally in love with the wildflowers and the park. And even though I’ve only been home for a couple of days, I’m already trying to figure out when I can get back to what has quickly become my favorite national park.

A Few More Poppies

In addition to the oriental poppies I photographed at Longwood Gardens, I also photographed a couple of other types of poppies this spring.

The first is papaver somniferum – commonly known as eithr the Opium Poppy or the Bread Poppy. The seeds of this flower can be used to make poppy seeds for bread – and opium can be made from other parts of the plant.  I found the Opium Poppies growing in the herb garden at the National Arboretum in Washington DC.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Here’s one of the flowers backlit by the sun. I love the glow of the red and purple in the photo.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And finally, three poppies in various stages of blooming.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The final poppy I photographed this year is a Moroccan Poppy – papaver atlanticum.  I really like the delicate petals on this flower. I photographed the Moroccan Poppies at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginina.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Wonderful Daylilies

Here in the Washington DC area, daylilies are in full bloom. From front yards to botanical gardens to the roadsides, it seems that every where I look, I see another variety of daylily (hermerocallis).

These are a few of the ones I’ve photographed recently.

First up are some Lavender Frolic Daylilies photographed at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The next three daylilies were photographed at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia.

A Ruffled Apricot Daylily – I love the petals on this flower. They have an amazing color and texture.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The pink and the yellow of the Arkansas Post Daylily very nicely compliment each other.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

And finally a pink and white daylily. Like several others I’ve photographed, the edges of the petals are ruffled. Unfortunately, there wan’t a sign by these flowers, so I’m not sure what variety they are. If any knows what these daylilies are, please let me know.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Canada Lily – Lilium Canadense

On our recent trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway, I photographed a fantastic wild lily. Bill and I were driving along Rt. 56 between the Blue Ridge Parkway and Montebello, Virginia when I spotted a splash of red along a hillside. We were on our way to Crabtree Falls, so planned to stop back at the flower on our way back to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

On our first pass by the area where I’d seen the flower on our return trip, we didn’t see anything. So we turned around, and finally spotted the flower. Since there was no where to park, Bill dropped me off and proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes driving up and back this section of Rt 56 while I photographed the flower.

Then came the challenge of figuring out what it was that I’d been photographing.  I knew it was a wild lily – but I didn’t think it would be too hard to identify. It was a red lily than hung down from the stem. The petals curved partway back. And the underside was spotted.

It turned out – that there wasn’t anything similar in any of my wildflower books. After some searching, I thought there was a good chance that it was a red variety of a Canada Lily – Lilium Canadense. The problem was – most online descriptions of Lilium Canadense – say that there are multiple stems and flowers (up to 20) on each plant. A little more research – and help from several wonderful friends on Twitter – I decided it really was a lilium canadense.

So here are the photos of a red Canada Lily.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Fan Columbine

Earlier this spring, I photographed two types of columbine (aquilegia) – McKana Group and Robin – at Longwood Gardens. While photographing, I was chatting with another photographer – who asked had I seen the columbine around the fountain? Apparently each year, the staff at Longwood Gardens plants columbine around the fountain at the center of the Flower Garden Walk.

When I made another visit to Longwood in early May, the fan columbine (McKana Group) was all around the center fountain. It was gorgeous.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

There were so many color combinations in the flowers that I never did manage to photograph them all. Here are some of my favorites.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Photography Links – July 17, 2009

Just a few links this week . . .

PopPhoto Flash has a Capturing Full Moon

Black Star Rising has Is A Verbal Agreement Sufficient for a Model Release

Lighting Essentials has 10 Pricing Challenges and Strategies for Photographers

Oriental Poppies – papavar orientale

On a visit to Longwood Gardens in May, I was able to photograph a couple of varieties of Oriental Poppies (papavar orientale).

The first oriental poppy I photographed had very intense red petals that seem to have fringing at the edges. The center of the blossoms and seeds were a very dark purple.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The other type of Oriental Poppies I photographed were a lovely orange poppy named Midnight. I really like the variations in shades of orange in the petals.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

Poppies only seem to bloom for a short time in the DC area – but they certainly do put on a show while they are in bloom.

Pitcher Plants at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

One morning in May, I heading to Richmond, Virgnia to do some photography at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. I’d visited Lewis Ginter a few times before, but really had a chance to explore the gardens when the flowers were blooming. The first flowers I photographed were the peonies.

Then I started exploring. In the West Island Garden, I discovered an amazing variety of pitcher plants. I’d seen a few pitcher plants growing indoors at some of the local botanical gardens – this was the first time I’d found them growing outdoors. Several of the varieties of pitcher plants were growing near each other (and their identification signs). I’ve done my best to get the plants correctly identified. If I have them identified incorrectly, please let me know.

The first set I photographed were some Yellow Trumpet Pitcher Plants (sarracenia flava). I really like the patterns and colors of the group of pitcher plant.s

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

I haven’t been able to identify this next type of pitcher plant. The flowers on this one are incredible.

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

The final trumpet plant I photographed was the White Trumpet Pitcher Plant (sarracenia leucophylla).

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins

(c) 2009 Patty Hankins