The April Fool tramples his path
Running roughshod through this world
Joyous conceit
Close-minded and haughtily assured
Gilded, unperturbed
Dazzled masses froth over such trappings
The success, the power, the sprawling paper card manse propped up on the hill
How do I get mine?
Follow the April Fool
For he knows not he knows nothing
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Black, white, and all the shades of gray coloring the in between. Mix in a dash of soft focus and toss with a hit of certainty in a cauldron of abstraction and you have yourself a recipe for creation. While it may not jive with many folks, I love this kind of photograph; varied shades of grayscale values distilled down to abstract forms painting with light and movement.
In this photograph I am making creative use of daffodil stems. Photographed at close range, a distance of about 15 inches, with a 100mm macro lens with an f/3.5 aperture. This arrangement allowed me to execute a shallow depth of field, juxtaposing the foreground of focused daffodil stems flowing free while rendering plenty of bokeh across the photo’s blurred background.
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. Just because a thing is void of color does not mean it is void of life, energy, complexity, and passion. Let this be a lesson in all things.
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Near on five years later I have made a companion photograph to tango with I’d love to see you in that dress. I am not breaking any ground in stating flowers evoke a feminine grace. Here, as it was five years past, that grace manifests in the likeness of a lithe dancer transfixing us with her craft. Her pirouette moves and shifts the dress setting our hearts to flutter. With the calendar’s turn to spring I look forward to capturing more of nature’s dancers shining light upon our lives.
Of course a shout-out to the incomparable Elton John for the lyrically inspired title.
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The pivot to spring you ask? More like the rusted cog seized in refusal to spin up spring. Mother Nature, have you no oil can? Have you no mercy? Despite a brief touch of warmth we have been summarily dismissed to low 40s, gloom, and biting winds. Winter in the Mid-Atlantic battles on. Another year, another backloaded winter. It’s a back door cold front the did us in this time. Further freezing seasonal gears in their ruddy place.
But never doubt the will daffodils. They are rocking in full shine. Sure they made headway two to three weeks later than usual, but in yesterday’s 70s they splayed in full glory. Crocus, hyacinth, and daffodils serve as standard bearers of spring. The first to push through and remind us warmer climes lay in wait.
It’s with fair certainty I’ve made an iteration of this daffodil photograph since 2012. It’s an exciting reminder that flowers are back and it never gets old. I talk often about revisiting photographs. I maintain it is good practice. No matter how similar, no two photographs are ever the same. So make them over and over again. The world is fluid and the arrow of time forever points forward. We’re always changing, aging, moving. The same is never the same—so capture those moments and lock away the moment. Now if you don’t mind I am off to don my winter coat and gripe more about things I cannot control.
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Eager for some more lens time, I photographed this daffodil earlier today. Chilling on the north side of my yard, it’s always my first flower to bloom—a clockwork messenger chiming to the first sounds of spring. A spring it seemed that was on with a vengeance this March. Seeing temperatures readily cracking 60, with several spikes into the 70s and 80s. Record shattering warmth after the back-to-back, bitterly cold backloaded winters of 2014 and 2015 that locked the mid-Atlantic in ice. Finally it seemed this was the year to rocket off into an early, and perhaps even warm spring.
[Insert cliché record scratch] We toss.
In spite of our best hopes of a Cinderella springtime, it’s looking more and more likely that the region will face a significant late season storm Sunday into Monday. Just in time for the start of spring. The spring that once held such hope. Instead we may be looking at widespread moderate to significant accumulations across the area. So all those poor cherry blossoms that got dressed up early this year will have their nascent blossoms held in icy cold hands. I guess we hold our collective breath that the moderate temperatures spring back post haste.
As far as the photo goes, here’s shot number two with 35mm. I’ve been keen to see how the bokeh would show with flora work, and the daffodil’s spring showing made for a timely subject. With plenty of mid-day sun pouring down, I rifled off a few shots from an approximate distance of about 10 inches from the daffodil bloom you see above. Stopped down to f/2 there’s plenty of buttery bokeh smoothing out the shallow depth of field. I love this kind of shooting—thin areas of selective focus that make for a more airy, whimsical feel.
My brief time with the new lens continues to impress, even if it still feels a bit foreign to me. From today’s quick session the takeaway was all about color. Specifically the color rendering in full, harsh sun. The blues and yellows being particularly vivid standouts.
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With the first turn in the weather, the calendar mandates it’s time I get back to my photographic roots. After a toddling period of crash course trial and error in the early days of 2012, flower photography quickly established itself as my go-to comfort spot behind the camera. It’s where I first felt some semblance of control in the process of making satisfactory photographs. Everything else—most certainly landscapes included—felt far too unwieldily and daunting at the time.
But with a diverse array of flowers in abundant supply in just about every corner of my property, I had plenty of eager subjects waiting to help me learn and grow. Here I more often than not unwittingly stretched my creative muscles through soft focus and shallow depth of field with my petaled muse. I remember being quickly drawn to the way bokeh and soft focus when juxtaposed with areas of clarity can move the eye throughout a photograph, bringing layers and depth to an image. This exact relationship is what was entirely lost on me as a high schooler struggling with painting—for whatever reason I was too engrained with this hyper-realistic bias where everything had to be clearly defined and in focus. Never understanding that all that clarity, when deployed incorrectly creates competition and noise throughout a composition.
So while the sunsets and landscapes are sure to continue, a steady dose of flowery soft focus and shallow depth of field is on the way. For now we’ll start with this daffodil—the first of my flowers to bloom.
With weather types talking up the threat of early Spring snow for folks in the northeast, I made sure to document that springlike lifeforms are in fact making their presence known. My front and side yards are both home to daffodils and they never fail to be the first to make the annual flora journey back to life. Like clockwork they sound the springtime alarm, beating all of my other plants, trees, and flowers to the sunlight. In this case though, it looks like my buds may open just in time to be buried by snow.
Ah, weather.