Scenes of Vermont Forums

The Showy Lady Slippers on the Dog Pond Road in Woodbury are starting up. They should be good this weekend, the next weekend, and maybe the "next" next weekend. They are located about 1/3 of a mile north of the Wheeler Hill Road or 7/10ths of a mile south of the Valley Lake Road. They are across from the white mailbox, number 1580. I didn't take any photos because it was raining, but I'll be back.

I went back to photograph the lady slippers yesterday. In the past I was using my panasonic FZ 30 with the articulated LCD display. This year I used my new rebel with the fixed display and it's tricky to get a level close up (macro) shot without getting wet. Unless you are wearing hip waders you can kneel or squat with out getting wet. You have to hunch over. This is not a problem at the Eshqua Bog because you can shot level close ups from the boardwalk. I'm goning to download the photos as soon as I'm done here.

Phil: Sometimes you just gotta do what you just gotta do

I have a pair of barn boots that are in my car all summer. I also have a waterproof tarp and masons kneepads. It is not unusual to have to do some crawling around on hands, knees and even belly, to get the kind of shot and background you want.

With macro, because you are at such high magnification, every little thing that seems "wrong" is magnified, including focus and leveling issues. Having the right tripod is important. Cheaper tripods will not work well for this, because they will not get down to the ground. The Manfrotto (Bogen) and Gitzo tripods were the old standards for this kind of work, because they were designed so the legs could be locked in different positions -- almost horizontal. Today, thankfully, there are many competitors out there (the Gitzo are beautifully crafted and breathtakingly priced!). The Manfrotto is a bit less expensive and perhaps not as high end -- but well made, nonethless. I have owned a couple sets of them. Today, Velbon, Slik, Feisol, and others out there are competitively priced. But you will have to pay at least $100 to get legs that will work for this purpose.

The other thing to note is that most of them have a center column that is usually 18 or so inches long. That doesn't work very well with macro. Its almost impossible to get down near the ground, with that center post in the way. In "the day" I sawed mine off to just barely the length necessary to fit in the spider. I generally don't like to extend it anyway, as it has less stability. Some setups came with two center columns, the normal one and a very short one, for macro work.

Today, I have one that allows the center column to be removed and re-installed horizontally to the legs. Really a slick setup.

The tripod that I used worked okay, but all of that hunching, bending and twisting i had to do to see the display got to my poor old retired body after a while. The barn boots will get you there alright (mine did well), but I had to give up and get wet to see the display for a level shot.