Another one that’s not elusive in the sense that it’s rare, but that I’ve never encountered it before. This post combines my love of wildflowers and my yard macro thing from the last post. I spotted these guys in an overgrown garden that’s being reclaimed by weeds. Sigh. Laziness. That’s why I can’t have anything nice. But hell, I do have wildflowers so I don’t really care. Both images are done with the OM 90mm macro. Like you couldn’t guess.
I didn’t intend to convert to B&W when I shot the second one, but when I got it into Lightroom, the color saturation was so off the charts that I thought it detracted from what I wanted to do with the image; namely to show the structure of the plant. The color shot I deliberately isolated that one blossom and leaf to hide the structure of the plant. If you didn’t know it was loosestrife, or didn’t know how a loosestrife plant was put together, that shot wouldn’t really help you. The second one (shot at f11) does that, but the extreme yellow and green made you forget about how symmetrical and lovely the arrangement of leaves and flowers is, so I deleted it. Then I cranked the green slider a ways to further emphasize the tonal range.
My approach to shooting wildflowers is to try for something that might be different from how other people have taken photos of the same subject. I mean, how many shots of pink lady slippers does the world need? Whenever I shoot them I try for different angles or to find a specimen that has something unique about it. If I don’t have an idea of how others shot the plant, I try for what strikes me about it at the time. As I studied these little wonders, I was struck by the symmetrical arrangement of the flowers on the leaves, and the graceful counterparts they make. So that’s what I tried to highlight. Hope you liked my “fine art” treatment of a backyard weed.
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