Poppy Snake, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

It’s poppy popping time in my garden, otherwise known as full spring around here. Poppy pods are surprisingly short lived: once they start to give birth you only have a little time before the poppy is in full bloom, and fully born. Once the flower in out, the pod splits in two, and the flimsy halves are soon gone in the wind.

The photos above and below were both taken with my 200mm f/4 macro lens combined with a 36mm extension tube on tripod at ISO 200.

The image on top was backlit by the early morning sun, and I focused and exposed for the hairs of the opening bud (which were coated with morning dew). The exposure was 1/400 of a second at f/11, which was an underexposure of the pod itself and the background by at least a couple of stops. I like the graphic effect, and (per the title) think it looks a bit like a viper head.

The image below was front lit as the sun came up, and is more conventionally exposed (for a macro) at 1/50 of a second and f/32. I used my hands to create a shadow (and partial reduction of the strong, direct sunlight).

Now, that only leaves some questions: What if people were born using pods like poppies? Would we be pod people? Would the pods be our other mothers (it is, after all, Mother’s Day)?

View this image larger.

Related stories: Little Shop of Horrors; Poppy Emerging; Papaver Birth; Wet Poppy Bud; Being Born; my Poppy set on Flickr.