Dark, Brooding Camellia

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 160 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Brooding Beauty

straight out of the camera
Desktop-Background Versions

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It's been a busy week. As I mentioned in my
previous post, we took a weekend trip to Aomori in the far north of Japan's
main island, and on the way home I came down with a cold. I'm finally feeling better today.

While driving around the mountainous coast of the far northwest corner
of Japan's main island, I came across a tree full of beautiful Japanese
camellia (otometsubaki · 乙女椿). They're not difficult to find, but
pristine examples within easy reach and not molested by wind are a bit more
difficult. I've gotten decent photos on only one other occasion, mentioned in
“An Amazing Day of Photography at Some Eastern-Kyoto Temples”
and in a followup some time later.

I haven't gone through the photos from the Aomori trip yet, but this one caught my eye while loading them into Lightroom.
Maybe the bokeh isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I like this kind
of shot so much (the sharp edge of the petals diffusing away into a milky blur) that I lead my blog post
about
the lens that took it with a similar shot taken that first time I got nice photos of a camellia.

The flower is remarkably beautiful in a Disney princess kind of way, but
this shot is dark and brooding because it's underexposed, because I was
stuck trying a new kind of lens CPU that gives the same
wildly-erratic exposure problems that the first kind of lens CPU
that I tired gave me. Sigh.

Anyway, I set the proper white balance, and applied the slight crop
needed to make this desktop-background version, and here we go. Otherwise,
it's just as imported into Lightroom.

I have a bazillion other photos of the same flower, so I'm sure at least
a couple more will find there way to my blog sooner or later.