“Advanced Petal Design”
June 19th, 2019
Category: nature & sunsets
As part of my black & white month, I wanted to feature some photos of cactus. I’ve visited several botanic gardens and conservatories, but hadn’t ever spent the time and focus needed to properly capture cactus. So, on a cold Sunday in January, I drove down to Lincoln Park, and upon arriving, realized that I’d left my Nikon at home. After driving home and back, I walked into the Lincoln Park Conservatory, only to discover that they don’t have a cactus room – some days just don’t work out how you plan.
So, instead of cactus, I took photos of plants that I thought would work great in black & white…and someday, I’ll actually take a trip to photograph cactus.
In mid-December, I drove past the Indiana Dunes and stopped and took the first image; around this time, I’d decided that February would be all black & white images – more on that at the end of the month. I invited a photographer friend to come along on a dedicated trip back to the dunes and took photos with the intention of creating a week’s worth of black & white images.
We had a fantastic day of photography and conversation, and I ended up with quite a few more than 7 images and some images with fantastic texture and composition.
Goodness, it was cold. We stood on a parking garage roof in Elgin for 2 hours, stepping back into our cars in between photos to allow the soles of our feet to warm back up. Luckily, the lunar eclipse didn’t happen during the “Polar Vortex” (that was the next week), but it was only 4° F (-15.5° C), and being 5 levels up meant there was nothing blocking the wind.
However, unlike the 2015 Lunar Eclipse and the 2017 Solar Eclipse, there wasn’t cloud cover. I didn’t stay for the entire eclipse, but I’m pretty happy with the images that I did capture.
