The North Berkeley farmer’s market, on a stretch of streets sometimes known as the “gourmet ghetto,” is certified organic throughout. Cruising with my camera, I spotted a flower vendor, Thomas Farm, with some wonderful tulips on display. Closer inspection also revealed some anemones, which mostly hadn’t opened yet. The anemones were one bunch for $5 and five bunches for $20. I “haggled” and got six bunches for my $20—a good deal indeed for my inner photographer since once these flowers started to open they displayed gorgeous translucent colors!

Anemones are named for the wind, using the Greek word for wind, anemos. They are supposed to open best when it is windy. Placing them in a sunny room, I found that they are also highly heliotropic—they open with sunshine and close up again at dusk.

So in the middle of the day, using sunshine for front light, I photographed them on my lightbox. For the image shown above I used eight exposures, with each exposure at f/32 and ISO 200. Shutter speeds were between 1/15 of a second and 10 seconds. (If my photographic and post-production techniques for shooting flowers for translucency interest you, you might want to consider the Photography Flowers for Transparency workshop I am giving at the end of 2013.)

I used my 85mm tilt-shift macro lens to make this shot, a lens I once described as “channeling” Edward Weston because it is completely manual and the kind of lens Weston used—you even have to stop it down yourself when you are ready to shoot because there is no auto diaphragm.