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As the sun crests the hills, a photographer has a few minutes when the tips of trees and plants are radiating the sun’s fresh light, and the rest of the plant rests in the shadows … a solar spotlight of sorts.

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Someday I’ll learn my lesson, only go waterfall chasing after a nice healthy rain!  Rocky Glen in Peoria has a nice vertical hike over a hill and into the valley to reach the waterfall; in the second photo you can see the massive boulder that the water flows underneath after dropping down the cliff face – yes, the same boulder with the carvings & graffiti.

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Normally graffiti distracts from my nature photos; but in this case, the carvings were so pervasive on this rock that it became an artistic subject in itself. In order to capture “Winding Valley”, I had to stand on this rock, and interestingly there were no carvings on the other side of the boulder.

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One of the best parts of early spring is that there is enough greenery to add a nice pop of color, but there is not enough greenery to block a longer scenic photo. And I particularly love the fact that the stream reflects the light blue sky in this photo.

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Any time that I go on a photo walk, I start capturing photos before I find inspiration; generally, I’m visiting a specific event or location, so that means that I have a subject in mind.  On the photo walk to the Black Partridge Woods, I knew that I would be capturing early spring flowers, but there is always that first photo that kicks off the inspiration at a photo shoot (at least for me).  

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As I climbed up the hill, I found this fallen tree. I love that the branches appear to reach out into the forest. But as I stared at the downed tree, I realized that it may be a wonderful black & white image. I’ll let you decide.

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I’m always amazed at the people who can go on a nature hike and name most of the flowers, leaves, trees, or moss. My brain just doesn’t work that smoothly; do you want to know what generation of Mac laptop first had the G3 chip? I know that, but common names for flowers … well that’s never going to stick in my brain.

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Nearly every year, I take at least one trip down to Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum to photograph the butterflies. The Nature Museum has a wonderful year-round habitat for the butterflies, and in the middle of winter with all of the dull colors of nature, it’s relaxing to photograph something with rich colors.

But a friend challenged me to photograph something unusual in black & white; so I chose the butterflies in my second trip to Peggy Notebaert. Can I create interesting images without depending on the vibrant colors of the plants and insects? I am very pleased with the results of my experiment.

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One of my favorite things to do in the winter in Chicago is to visit one of the conservatories to see the plants and blossoms. The splash of color does wonders to invigorate my spirit.
But then I tend to create monochrome images out of my trips because I love the textures.

Not every image needs to be award winning; I enjoy looking for abstract compositions, and I’ve photographed this type of plant quite a few times and rarely gotten an image that I liked.  But I really like this image – award winning to me.

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.

I don’t ever shy away from editing an image from cropping to color correction to contrast; I almost never show an image before editing.

But every once in a while a scene presents itself that needs no editing, like this one. I did crop this, my lens simply didn’t have the reach for the crop that I wanted; and of course, I changed it to black & white. Some won’t like this image, even more will find an aspect to critique; and that’s fine, after all art is subjective.

I love converting photos of ferns to monochrome images; they’re almost monochromatic already, simply shades of green. However, in their full color, you can enjoy the yellow and red shades within the greens, as well as the brown details in the fibers and stems. For this curly image, I really enjoyed the peach-fuzz underneath the plant that you wouldn’t normally see.

One of the beauties of nature is the joy of looking closer. Not only does this fern remind me of nature’s zipper, the closer that you look at the plant, the more you can see and learn; the strands on the branch, the spots and texture on the fronds as well as the serration on the edges of the branches.

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”.

There is not much to say about this image; I love its simple composition.

I guess I’ve never really paid attention to the spines on various cactus plants, but I have definitely never noticed a cactus’s spines that are quite as curvy as this cactus’s are! I love the almost “barrier” like feel to the repeating leaves, if that’s what you would call them, and the repeating pattern makes me wonder if there’s a mathematical system behind their arrangement.