Tag: sedum

  • Pastel Pop

    Pastel Pop

    Macro photo depicting a reticulated pastel sedum bloom
    Pastel Pop — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/400

    In taking a top-down approach we can process the world around us differently. This may be one of the most basic photographs I have posted to this site, and yet I find it endlessly captivating. It has a real watchability if you’ll allow me to use words that read like they don’t belong in a dictionary. Seriously, I fully anticipated the red-dotted line to appear under watchability—I would have lost any and all bets on that being a word. Anyway. I find myself mesmerized as I look down and into this image, losing myself for minutes at a time. Its tight reticulated pattern reminds of an autostereogram—those mind-melding 2-D images that are supposed to reveal a 3-D scene within its otherwise non-specific pattern. These drove me nuts as a kid. I can remember numerous class trips to several museums where we’d inevitably find ourselves in the obligatory gift shop where we’d one-by-one try our hand at discerning the image. My friends would undoubtedly make it work within a few minutes, and there’d I sit, dejected and unable to make out any kind of scene. My brain couldn’t get past the replicant TV snow presented in technicolor splatter. It always bummed me out as I feared my eyes and brain were somehow broken—somehow a failure of intelligent design. While I still can’t find any kind of image waiting to burst forth from this photograph, nor do I think there’s anything specific hiding in there, it sure is fun to look upon. Far less stressful than classmates bleating out, “there’s the horse! Can you see it, Greg? It’s right there!”

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  • Time Draws Near

    Time Draws Near

    Macro photograph of silver-spotted skipper butterfly feeding on sedum.
    Time Draws Near — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/320

    Still under the influence of a post Makers Fest malaise I missed two great sunsets earlier this week. I must be slipping because it somehow didn’t bother me in the slightest. I was happily caught up in day job things and basking in last weekend’s festival success. However, a week sans camera has left me photo-less this weekend. As I sit inside on a drizzly Saturday morning waiting for a front to come, my ears listen to The Legend of Zelda remixes as my eyes fix their gaze on Lightroom—to a dozen or so macro shots I made on September 8. Nothing crazy, just some pictures of my front yard sedum bloomed and in its prime. Serendipitously a sliver-spotted skipper butterfly happened to drop on by for an afternoon snack. While not long for the flower tops I did manage to steal one suitable photograph of this fleeting creature; fall is coming and so too its time will end.

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  • Just a Silver-Spotted Skipper snacking on some sedum

    A shallow depth of field macro photograph of a Silver-Spotted Skipper dining on sedum nectar.
    Just a Silver-Spotted Skipper snacking on some sedum — 100mm | f/4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/160

    Here in New Jersey we’re just about out of scenes like this for the season. As the Autumn veil descends life begins its annual retreat. Through the ebb and flow photography encourages the capture of singular moments that otherwise slip by riding the sands of time. These moments simultaneously give us both something to remember and something to look forward to. It’s wonderfully circular.

    This shot pushes the soft focus about as far as I like to go. Perhaps too far. Given a mulligan I’d try to bring the eye into sharper focus. As it stands it’s the wing edge that gets the very narrow field of sharpest focus. Which is interesting in its own right. Photography doesn’t always have to be perfect to be beneficial. Sometimes things are just good enough.

  • There’ll be nobody home

    This square format photograph features a cross processed treatment of a painted lady butterfly at three quarters perspective and from the rear. The buttery smooth bokeh and shallow depth of field draws attention to the butterfly as it rests on a freshly bloomed sedum.
    There’ll be nobody home — 100mm | f/4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/160

    I arrived home from the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania stretched and worn. Bettered but battered after a long weekend celebrating my cousin’s pending nuptials. A good yet exhaustive time was had by all.

    Leaving the cousin’s shiny new F-150 my mind clung to the imminent hopes of a hot shower and a nap—here it is, victory. Or so I thought. Immediately out the truck I noticed 1) my sedum have finally blossomed, and 2) a butterfly had finally come to rest on one my flowers. I’d seriously been waiting all season for this.

    With the shower and nap plan on hiatus I grabbed my gear and tried to get a capture. I only got off two shots before this common butterfly was scared away for good—my approach wasn’t exactly one of stealth—and neither of which were from a frontal perspective. Even still I connect with the story this image tells. One of time. The never ending story of the inescapable passage of all things. And somewhere out there is the future we can’t quite see.