fourpointedstar

This particular morning, I saw very few spiders. While I do enjoy capturing a bee in a flower, it’s more fun to photograph other insects as they pollenate.  Spiders are even more unique; typically they’re “hiding”, hunched in an area of the plant that is out of the way, but paying attention to YOU the photographer.  It’s a cat-and-mouse game, but for the spider, it’s a monster-and-mouse game.

I took a much closer photo of this tiny jumping spider but the photo lacked any sense of scale. While the photo doesn’t show nearly any detail for the spider, this photo gives a much better sense of scale and shows how hard it can be to see these spiders, let alone capture them.

I will never admit how many photos it took to get this particular image: the bee would fly off, the bee’s face would be too dark or too light, the focus wouldn’t be correct, etc. As it is, there are still elements that I wish I could fix; I dislike that the center is so out of focus, and I wish that the bee’s were just a little more in the sunlight. But I love that the image implies that the bees are circumnavigating the flower, an insect Juan Elcano if you will.

Any photographer knows that there are acceptable photos, there are good photos, and then there are photos that you feel lucky to capture; and you have to display all three types.  Bees rarely stay on a flower for longer than a few seconds, and this image took advantage of a flower’s askew petals; lining the two up wasn’t skill, it was luck.  But a good photographer knows that the more often you go out to take photos, the more likely you are to get lucky. 

I have some friends who will bring along spray bottles to add water drops to plants to make the image pop, but for this flower, the staff at the conservatory did the work for me!

Sometimes a photo is already lined up for you, like this blossom. I did have to stand on my tiptoes to capture the image with the green leaf behind the red blossom, and then take the photo several times in order to get the pistil in focus.

I walked right past this plant while complaining that I hadn’t taken enough photos of blossoms. Sarah kindly pointed out that the purple blossoms were almost radiant; I’d walked right past the plant because most of the blossoms were wilted and past their prime. The yellow stamen are almost creepy.

I love seeing other people’s photos, and recently I saw a photo of a single cactus blossom from a photographer that was perfect and beautiful. I don’t like my image quite as much as theirs, but this cute blossom was absolutely perfect for the photograph.

The tiny blossoms on this cactus were the perfect cluster of beauty for my macro lens. The sad thing about macro photos is that I have no clue what the remainder of the plant looks like now.

I love visiting an indoor garden like Chicago’s conservatories in the winter. The garden’s colors and vibrance are refreshing against the backdrop of the grey and browns of our winters.

Growing up, my Mom always had Christmas cactus, and if I remember the original plant may have come from her brother had quite the green thumb. I definitely remember playing football in the house with my brother and knocking the plant over and the blossoms falling off and KNOWING that we were in so much trouble.

But when I told my parents that Sarah and I were moving in together, my Mom gave Sarah a cutting of the Christmas cactus as a “home warming gift”.