Macro Work

(July 5th) I had another fun early evening shooting some macro stuff. It's rewarding to be able get some frames of a subject that doesn't care at all if you come close. The flowers were completely stunning today. These are all wildflowers - at one time these flowers were everywhere in the great prairies that covered much of the midwest.

Flowers rely on their pollinators to reproduce, and the pollinators need the flowers for food. Here you can see a Honeybee on a Butterfly Weed. This image has some nice contrast of colors, shapes and textures between the bee and the flower.

After a few days of macro shooting, I'm starting to notice significant improvement in my macro skills. I'm getting a lot better at focusing and composing these kinds of shots and starting to reach the point where I can inject some new creativity into the process. Here I went for a shot of the flower with the majority of the image out-of-focus and I'm satisfied with the look.

This photo of a honeybee and milkweed shows a little bit of the perspective that the pollinator sees when it comes in to land at a flower.

I found a few mushrooms that had recently sprung up not far from the flowers. With the late sun, I went for a shot with a bit more contrast than the soft flower shots.