Peony as Art

Well, perhaps that title is a bit strong. I wandered down to our formal (ornamental) gardens at the Experimental Farm today. My timing was poor, it being around 11:20am when I started shooting, just in time for the worst light of the day. Brilliant. Oh well ... I never said I was any good at this. The Peonies there are planted to bloom in successive waves, so I was assured of a pretty decent show.

Nikon D300, Nikon 28mm F3.5 AI

Nikon D300, Nikon 105mm F2.5 AI

I wasn't disappointed. At least three or four beds were in full bloom, although some of the plants were clearly finished, with many blooms in that sorry state with the petals clinging to life and stamens pondering the merits of feeding the poor, down-trodden bees. Seed pods were everywhere, but as you will see later, I was very glad they were there. My best shots (in my opinion) were seed pod shots.

I like to shoot closeups ... single flower, parts of flower, and even ultra-close shots of stamens etc. I see a flower as a landscape to be mined for images. We'll see how successful that was.

I started with the Nikon 300mm F4 AF-S and the TC17e teleconverter for a total effectove focal length of 750mm. This gives a superb closeness to shots with totally smooth backgrounds, exactly how I like my images.

Peonies are always flooded with ants ... and aphids. The aphids have not yet arrived, but the ants are here in force. As I mentioned, many Peonies are waiting to bloom.

I was able to shoot quite a few images with the sun pouring through translucent leaves. This was is ok, but not, I think, ultimately successful. Edit: I reprocessed the image and replaced the first version I posted here. I never liked that rendering, this is much better.



This one, on the other hand, is exactly what I was going for today. A landscape made up entirely of petals ... almost an abstract.


With this one, I wanted to see how it would look with just the stamens in focus. Not bad I suppose ...


At this point, I removed the teleconverter because I had to keep moving back 6 or more feet just to frame a whole flower. This sucker magnifies!

Many other flowers in bloom today ... just a taste of the magnificent Columbine bed here ... but this is a Peony article, so please burn out your eyes now that you have looked. The rest of the images in this article are shot with the 300mm only.



Every once in a while, I added the Canon 500D achromatic (2-element close up filter) in order to get in really close. The focus distance went from 4 feet to about a foot. Try moving a huge tripod to within a foot of a flower ... PITA. Anyway, you'll easily spot those images when you get there, as you stop seeing a flower and start seeing a tiny part of a flower.

Back to the Peony beds ... red is easily the most difficult color to render with a digital camera. A slash of sunlight ...


I do like this one ... came out exactly as I saw it in the viewfinder ... color too ...


A nice pair ...


Peony in waiting ...


And more pink ... I love these peonies, as they seem to render very well. Petal edges look great and there is texture in the petals ...


Dark pink Peonies have masses stamens ....



Very dark red came out ok ...


But light pink with seed pods is one of my faves. Tell me you don;t see a bird's nest and 5 chicks here :-)


A side view, more dynamic but a poor view od the little penguins (or whatever you see) ...


Another peek into the bowl ...


Then a nice pink bowl shaped Peony that turned out very nicely in my humble opinion ...


Followed by an attempt at a white bowl shaped Peony that was less successful ...


And now for the close up filter ... these are essentially abstracts ...




And here's one that looks like a face ... I guess this would be the man in the Peony ... and if you look close enough at the profile, you'll realize that this is the liquid metal terminator's face :-)


This is almost a monochrome renering of a really thickly petaled white Peony ...


Another super close shot of a stamen ...


And then ... the moment of truth ... my favorite shot of the day!


That one will print *so* well ... and here's a wider shot of the same flower ...


Another landscape styled shot ...


A shot of two finished Peonies with the 105mm again (I know I said all the rest were 300mm shots ... I lied.)




Those old manual lenses are sharper than anything else I own. Simply stunning ... but the 300mm does such a nice job of subject isolation that I don't really care.

So there you have it ... the Peony as Art ... or not. As you wish ...