Finally spring wildflowers are kicking into gear around here. Yesterday I ventured out with an idea in my head of doing something a bit different this year. It seems as if I go through this every year, wanting to create something a bit different than last season on the same flowers. I suppose I use it to push myself creatively and to not get in a rut of photographing things the same way over and over. Sometimes I go through this type of process where I have a very basic idea, and then it seems like a treasure hunt in attempt to find a subject that fits the idea like a missing piece of a puzzle.
Lone Bloodroot and sunlight
Well, this year the idea came before actually applying it to a subject. I have been learning slowly what works and what doesn’t using my 24mm f1.4 lens wide open. I simply love this lens. Using f1.4 seems to work well if you have a fairly isolated subject in the context of its larger environment. That seems rather common sense I suppose – isolate your subject. I found it harder to accomplish in practice because at 24 mm you are taking in a lot of environment. For wildflowers, you typically get around this by using longer focal length lenses and actually looking for backgrounds that are far away from the flower. You make a tight portrait of a flower, or just use a wide angle and a lot of depth of field for flowers in a landscape. My idea was going in the opposite direction of both of those things.
Once I had a subject, I wanted to then use some textures in post to accent the out of focus background. Now I just needed a subject that worked into this basic concept. It didn’t really matter what it was, but it had to work into that basic framework.
I encountered quite a few lone flowers, but they just had too many other objects around them that would compete in the scene. It might be a dominant tree that is too close, other surrounding flowers or other plants, or distracting angular lines in the background – all were working against the idea I had.
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American beech tree photo, Dodge Park, Sterling Heights, Michigan
There are a lot of very large beech trees in the woods behind my home that I have photographed quite often. I have always been drawn into the characteristic white branches of the older trees. Like gray hair, I see it as a sign of wisdom, life experience, and survival. I like how they retain many of their leaves well into winter, often standing out in a snow covered forest.
Beech trees have quite a bit of folklore about them. Sometimes their smooth grey bark in the lower portions of the tree carries some human history. Unfortunately so many people see it as the prime spot to proclaim their undying love. The wisdom of the upper branches of the tree looking downward seems to be lost on such people.
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