Luminous Poppy, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

The saying goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Although why you’d want to skin a cat, I don’t know. It sounds mean, unpleasant, and essentially futile.

In any case, there are certainly more than one way to photograph a poppy. In this case, a white Icelandic poppy, Papaver nudcaule “Wonderland Mix” from Julian’s garden. (I say “Julian’s garden”– and my eight year old is very fond of this flower patch, and certainly helped design it and pick out its occupants, but guess who prepared it, planted everything, and maintains it? Hint: not Julian.)

In the photograph above, I photographed the poppy in ambient sunlight, using a small tungsten spot light to shine through the petals and create a luminous effect.

This photo shows a conventional–but extremely close–macro in ambient sunlight:

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Finally, this photograph was taken with my new macro flash kit (about which, more later):

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