"Icicle, Drop and Droplet"
There's a story behind this shot, and behind all of the icicle shots I've posted, as there often is. It starts with the rescue about 6 years ago of a plant - a large-leafed philodendron - that was living in a fairly large flower pot, and which had been placed besides some garbage cans, obviously put out as trash. This philodendron had two trunks, but only about 9 leaves total between the two trunks. I stopped my minivan, picked it up and took it home to the small, one bedroom apartment where I was living at that time. Just call me plant rescuer.
The following day I discovered a tag identifying the plant as a Monstera Deliciosa, and for 5 years or so I believed that that's what it was. Over those ensuing years, it went from having about 9 leaves to well over 20 now. That may not sound like many, but these leaves are large - up to three feet long, and a foot and a half wide; and as this plant has two trunks, it requires a big space. Also, each winter it sheds about a half dozen of these large fronds. About a year ago, after re-potting it in a larger pot (and after it responded, following a period of adjustment, by growing prodigiously) I decided to try and sell it on Craigslist, as it was taking over a large section of my bedroom - the only spot I had with enough bright light and no direct sunlight. But before placing an ad I wanted to verify that it is what I believed it was. So I looked on the internet.
After a little bit of Googling I found that it was not a monstera deliciosa, or Swiss Cheese Plant as it's commonly known - which is a climbing vine, not a single trunk tree, and with leaves not nearly as large - but a Philodendron bipinnatifidum or Tree philodendron, despite its having twin trunks: Tree philodendrons normally have but one trunk. So this may be either a rare mutation or, more likely, two plants growing in the same pot.
Well I had no response whatsoever, from any of the listings I posted, so it remains where it's been: Directly in front of the northeast-facing, bedroom window where some monsterously-long icicles have been forming. This is the point in my story where the plant comes into play.
As I've mentioned in a previous post, I missed out on photographing some short-lived icicles growing outside my much more accessible kitchen window, one of the twin windows over my sink, when they fell off before I'd had a chance to capture their likeness in perpetuity. Saturday morning, my first day off in 11 days, I didn't want to risk missing out on shooting these long icicles growing behind my enormous, previously mis-identified as monstera deliciosa, Tree philodendron. My only problem was that it is a very heavy object - it must be over 100 pounds, now that it's living in larger quarters - and there's no place to move it to inside my bedroom. It's on a small wooden table that I also had rescued from a former neighbors' curb. I had to cut about 8 inches off of each of the tables' four legs so that the plants' leaves wouldn't be crushed against the exposed roof boards of my bedroom's cathedral ceiling. There was no way I wanted to carry it down the seven steps that connect my bedroom to the kitchen/dining room, and then back up those same seven steps. So I pulled it out from in front of the bedroom window just far enough so that I could part the foliage enough, using a variety of body parts, to be able to photograph those icicles - sorta like Arte Johnson used to do on Laugh-In:
Now, to the actual shooting of these images. I shot a bunch of pictures; then I took the SD card from the camera, walked down to the kitchen/dining room - which also triples as our miniature home office - and uploaded them onto my laptop. I'd next preview what I'd just shot. I wasn't completely happy, especially with the few images I'd tried with the drops forming on, and consequently falling from, the icicle tips. So, I repeated the process; this time I used burst-shooting mode to shoot multiple frames at 3 fps (three frames per second). I again previewed the images downstairs and, when I still wasn't satisfied, returned upstairs once again. I continued this procedure, off and on, for about an hour - until I got a little wiser: After shooting a series of images, I'd preview them in the camera while sitting on our bed. If I wanted to re-shoot, which I did, numerous times - trying to capture that perfect droplet-in-mid-air image - it was a much easier and quicker procedure. In all, I shot nearly 200 images over a two and a half hour time span; of these maybe half were contenders, and only about half a dozen were "keepers". This is the best of the bunch, and possibly the last that I'll post of that series.
"Icicle, Drop and Droplet" fine art prints, matting and framing.
Monstera deliciosa
Philodendron bipinnatifidum
Camera Data
Canon
Canon EOS 5D
1/1024 second
F/14.0
105 mm
1000
Jan 29, 2011, 11:24:09 AM
Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Canon EOS 5D
1/1024 second
F/14.0
105 mm
1000
Jan 29, 2011, 11:24:09 AM
Adobe Photoshop 7.0
