COVID-19 has given me time to work in the yard. With the cleanup has come better conditions for flower and plant life to thrive. Giving me ample opportunity to make macro photos without having to break any kind of social distance mores.
On Dark Matters of Contrast
When I look upon this photo my mind sees the flowing movement of long grasses underwater. Submerged and swaying with the rush of the tide. It’s a balanced fluid motion, a soft rocking back and forth carrying us away to far off places. Relaxing spaces full of soft beds, kind hearts, and unbridled hope.
Color, Please
Achieving great results with shallow depth of field is all about your aperture and your distance to your subject. Close in shooting at larger apertures will help you produce this desired effect. Whereas backing away and stopping down to a smaller aperture will increase your area of focus. Get out there and experiment!
Heart Opener
Soon you take the lessons of heart openers with you off the mat. Focusing on your heart becomes A Thing. Cultivating it. Protecting it. Honoring it. You come to understand the importance of keep your heart open for others and for yourself. This is the love that will save the world.
Spring Hyacinth
The hyacinth. A flower and name seemingly of bronze age origin. It’s a flower of imagination, fantasy, and hope. The kind of flower a concept artist would create when designing an idyllic alien world. I love them.
Whispers in the Dark
The exceptional thing about living through history is having, if only in a small way, the rare chance to shape it. By staying home, observing social distancing protocols, calling a friend, keeping a journal, checking on a neighbor, telling someone you love them, taking a walk, or making a photograph. Small acts when executed across communities and continents affect real change in response to an entirely new environment.
Shrouded
Happy accidents will come, big or small, and they must always be welcome. Next time your lens fogs up from a rookie oversight, make some fantastical flower photographs until you look upon the real world with clarity and focus once again.
Until Next Season
With autumn coming in quick it is near time to put flower photo season to bed. Here is a late season Black-eyed Susan blossom demure before strong late afternoon light; strong contrast driving home the power of the photograph.
The Collector
Understanding the uncertain fate of the honey bee, a lynchpin species for prolific pollination needed in a balanced ecosystem, I am beyond pleased to have them feast upon my Black-eyed Susan flowers in numbers. Oh, and they make joyous macro photo subjects, too.
Top Down
Macro worlds will suck you in. Once lensed properly the eye sets upon the small things so easily ignored. In such small spaces countless details reveal themselves to the well attuned. Here we encounter such a journey as we venture into the macro world of honeysuckle.
