Long lenses for small flowers

Delivering unusual or creative pictures of the different photographic subjects chosen for the Stories of wilderness project offers refreshing perspectives. Since me and the staff of the PAN Parks Foundation first developed the idea behind the project, we knew it should and would be a ‘unique’ project. Our vision was then as it is now to give our audience many interesting, first-hand information about wilderness conservation and show a new and refreshing perspective of the many elements that constitute a mountain ecosystem. In my experience, one of the ways to achieve this is delivering these unusual or creative pictures.

As spring days got longer and temperatures higher in the mountains of the Apennines, an incredible diversity of flowers appeared “on stage” to color and fill-up my agenda as nature photographer. Facing so many beautiful, yet at the same time abused, photographic subjects, I must literally study each single flower species and think on how to frame it for an interesting shot. In such situations, I usually repeat three “mantras” in my head. One is, “give context to the subject” to show the habitat where it lives. The second is, “if a flower is rare, try to photograph as many plants as possible together to show the relative abundance of it in Majella”. The third is, “Take extreme pictures”. The first two are easy to understand and I guess don’t need further explanation.

However, the last, is a creative credo and implies the use of “wrong” lenses to obtain unique perspective. Think out of the box and use the last lens you would think of to frame such classy subjects. This is exactly why you will find me maneuvring my longest telelens (a 500mm!) to photograph a Snowbell coming out of snow in the Beech forest or a patch of Globe flowers in a meadow, as well as I could inch toward a small cluster of rare butterworts to frame them with my 15mm fisheye to portray both the plant and the special cliffs where it grows together. Two completely different approaches for just one goal: show the people mountain wilderness as rarely seen before!

All images and texts © 2009-2012 Bruno D'Amicis Photography