Tag Archives: Macro photography

Leaving the Pod

Posted by dkrashb on
Waiting for the perfect moment

Waiting for the perfect moment

This was a first for me.  Inside the same milkweed pod spilling its guts in yesterday’s post, a single row of seeds remained, waiting for the order to jump.

Just like the silk dangling from the edge of the pod, these quiet soldiers let go of the pod one filament at a time as I watched.  Their progress was faster than their siblings hanging below.  I watched several threads spring free before my eyes in a matter of minutes.  And they really did spring.  They recoiled from their attachment point as if they’d been pulling against it trying to get free and were suddenly released when they least expected it.  A miniature wrestling match taking place in slow motion.

Having never watched the silk in a milkweed wind itself from its cocoon before, I was disappointed when the show was interrupted by the ring of my cell phone.  My husband hard returned home as was making dinner.  It was time to pack up my gear and make my way back home.

As I was rushing to try to get one last shot, hoping to get something sharp (the blowing wind was not helpful–my moving subject kept blurring on me), two men walked along the walkway.  They looked like they could have been homeless.  Or they could have been something entirely different.  It’s hard to tell.

They stared at me with an intensity that made me nervous.  So, I did what I always do when I’m nervous:  I smiled.

They smiled back at me.  I admit that their smiles did not exactly put me at ease.  Sometimes when someone smiles at you, you feel like you’ve just been smiled at by a shark or an alligator who’s thinking you might make a tasty next meal.

But Tisen looked nonplussed.  I can’t say that Tisen has necessarily demonstrated good judgment of character, but I think he would at least be alert if there were any eminent danger.

As the men walked by, one looked at Tisen and then smiled even bigger at me and said, “That’s an awesome dog.”  I smiled again and said, “Thanks.”  I don’t know who those men were, but at least they had good taste.

I can’t remember having ever been afraid in the park.  The park has an entire collection of security cameras.  There can’t be a square inch that’s out of range of one of them.  I’ve never seen or heard of any crime being committed in the park.  Although, I’m not sure I would know about it–I tend to shy away from the news.

I sometimes feel like I’m the dangerous one lurking in the dark when I walk Tisen long past sunset.  Not that I’m normally dangerous–just don’t make me mad.

As I put the lens cap back on my lens and collapsed the legs of my tripod, I found myself grateful for this pod of a park that provides a safe haven to shoot milkweed.

Escape

Posted by dkrashb on
Milkweed silk dangling from the pod

Milkweed silk dangling from the pod

As Tisen and I made our way around the park with me keeping an eye out for small things to shoot up close, I spied a milkweed plant with an open pod.  The pod dangled in the breeze with a waterfall of filaments cascading out the front.  It would have resembled a frozen waterfall had it not been bouncing in the wind.

I climbed down the embankment between the walkway and the milkweed, coaxing Tisen to follow once he had sniffed the tall weeds along the way to his satisfaction.  I setup my tripod so the lens was at eye level with the spillage from the pod.

As the wind blew, the filaments moved.  They didn’t just move in the breeze; they were gradually released one by one from whatever force suspended them.  In all the time I stood there waiting on cycles of wind, I saw only 3 or 4 filaments spring free.

I wondered about this process.  I always imagined a milkweed springing open and firing its downy interior into the wind, releasing all of its seeds at once.  Instead, like a parent terrified of becoming an empty nester, it clings to its progeny in a delicate finger hold.  And there the seeds stayed (even the next day), hanging by a thread between the safety of the pod and the freedom of the wind.

Perhaps this allows the milkweed to ensure its seed is spread further–it must take a pretty strong wind to blow the down out of the shell.  But what happens if the seeds remain forever suspended?  Eventually, the shell must rot and fall off the plant.  Are the seeds still viable by the time this happens?  Do they plant themselves at the base of the parent plant?  Do they end up living next door to their parent?  Are there advantages to having an extended family all on the same block?

In this arrangement, what I really see is me.  The feeling of being perched on the edge of freedom with a finger hold on security is a familiar one.  What I yearn for and what I’m willing to give up are diametrically opposed.  I want to jerk the pod off the stem and take it with me as I fly into a new world.

Yet, in the effort to keep the pod, I expend the time and energy I need for flight.

I wonder how the milkweed feels about it.  Does the milkweed silk contemplate whether it really wants to fledge while the pod wonders why it was foolish enough to spring open?

Is it a uniquely human attribute to debate what it is we need to do?  Is it a uniquely human attribute to have choice in what action we will take?  Every time someone makes a statement about what distinguishes humans from the rest of life on the planet, someone makes a discovery that debunks the assertion.  I will not make the mistake of presuming ambiguity is unique to humanity.

Tiny Brushes

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Naturally occurring brushes

Naturally occurring brushes

As I wandered Renaissance Park looking for small, interesting things to shoot, I noticed these little guys.  The entire length from the base of the “flower” to the tip of the bristles is between ½ – 1 inch.

I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t see them all that clearly.  Through the blur, I thought an artist had dropped her paint brushes as she made her way out of the park.

When I saw the high-resolution version of the image on my 27” screen, I was even more amazed by how much they really do resemble tiny paint brushes.  I’ve never noticed these little bristles before, but I probably would recognize the flower if it were still blooming.

This is yet another example of how the brain filters out information that seems irrelevant.  This filter is a great tool–we’d be completely overwhelmed if our poor brains had to process all the information within view every second of every day.  But it also can prevent us from seeing what’s in front of us even when it’s really important that we see it.

Take, for example, a data point I heard when I was taking a motorcycle skills course quite a few years ago.  In interviews with car drivers and motorcyclists following non-fatal collisions between the two, in the vast majority of cases, the motorcyclist reported having made eye contact with the driver shortly before realizing the driver wasn’t going to yield.  The driver reported having never seen the motorcyclist.

While this may seem unbelievable, think about the number of times you’ve been looking for something and it was right in front of you the whole time, but it was a different shape or color than you remembered.

Your brain was pattern matching and the object didn’t match the pattern you were looking for.  That’s what happens with motorcycles (and bicycles)–they don’t match the patterns the brain is most familiar with when looking for “objects to avoid hitting,” so the image doesn’t make it from your eyes into your brain.

When it comes to really small stuff, we probably see it, but like an impressionist painting, we mentally allow all the tiny dots to blend into a single image with varying colors.

From a distance

From a distance

As I’ve learned from photography, the eye goes to light spots and bright colors if they’re large enough to register on the radar.  We’re more likely to notice a tiny metal object twinkling in the sun (which also taps into our predator roots that hone in on movement) than a small red flower.  We’re more likely to notice a small red flower than a small yellow one.

These little paint brushes are unlikely to get noticed.  They’re small.  They’re tan and dark brown.  They don’t reflect light.  They’re low enough to the ground to hold perfectly still.

Perhaps the difficulty of seeing them is partly what makes having captured them satisfying.

Early Dandelion

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Dandelion in half-bloom

Dandelion in half-bloom

About this time of year, I find myself searching for signs of life.  This used to be more challenging when the ground was covered in snow and the temperatures were far below freezing.  Having move about 500 miles South, I don’t have to search hard to find a little color even at the end of January.

That said, I was still surprised to discover a dandelion attempting to bloom.  In fact, it was making some darn good progress.  I expect it will be fully open in another day or two if we don’t get a severe freeze.

Dandelions are one of those plants that I want to hate but I just can’t help but enjoy.  I know they’re an invasive introduced by European immigrants.  I know people hate to see them in their lawn (although I prefer a yard full of dandelions over a yard with nothing but grass).  Yet, there is something eternally cheerful about a dandelion.

perhaps it’s their sunny color against what is often a field of green.  Or maybe it’s the pure audacity of these little buggers in their insistence in popping up in the tiniest crevice.  How many times have you seen a dandelion blooming from what seems like an endless expanse of concrete only to discover a microscopic crack the flower has magically sprung from?  I suspect dandelions have some sort of jack hammer technology that allows them to forge through every manmade surface we can invent and make their way to the sun.

It’s probably not about the color or the persistence, to be honest.  It’s probably about my childhood memories of growing up in a house with an herbicide-free lawn (more because of the frugalness of my parents than because of any environmental or health concerns) that always had a healthy population of dandelions.

I used to pick them and make what seemed like giant bouquets for my mother.  She was always so pleased by the thoughtfulness that she would put them in a vase and act like I’d brought her a dozen roses.  In fact, I think she preferred them to roses.  They were the only flower I was allowed to pick.  I assume this was because it was the only one I could readily identify, so my mom didn’t have to worry about me picking any intentionally grown flowers this way.

I remember learning how to tell if you like butter by holding a blooming dandelion under your chin to see if it reflected yellow light onto your skin.  Of course, it always did unless it was near dark.  And, of course, we blew dandelion seeds off the head as we made a wish, just sure it would come true.  When I was a little older, I learned to tie the dandelion stems together to make crowns and bracelets and necklaces.

Dandelions were a renewable, cheap, and available resource that required only a little imagination to turn into something incredibly fun.  <sigh>  Life was so simple.

Symbiosis

Posted by dkrashb on
Moss neatly tucked into bark

Moss neatly tucked into bark

One of the things that always fascinates me is moss growing on tree bark.  This particular image was taken of a spot of particularly “tall” moss growing on some extremely rough bark.  I don’t know what kind of tree it is, nor do I know what kind of moss it is, but I had fun shooting it.

The thing is, it doesn’t quite translate in the image.  I considered shooting from an angle that’s parallel to the tree trunk to get something more interesting.  However, the bark would have blocked the view of the moss had I done that.

I like the relationship of the moss and the bark.  The moss has found its way into the cracks and crevices and filled a gap in the surface of the tree.  I don’t know if the moss benefits the tree in any way or if this is a one-way relationship.

According to eHow (of which I am somewhat skeptical in general, but the tiny bit of information about mosses on trees seems like it might be correct), mosses are considered epiphytic plants.  According to Merriam-Webster, an epiphyte is a plant that obtains its nutrients and water from the air and rain, but lives on another plant.  This seems to support eHow’s claim that most mosses are harmless to the trees they grow on.  It also seems they do not benefit the tree, but who knows, maybe we just haven’t discovered how yet?

But, this view of the relationship suggests mosses are squatters.  I am somewhat envious of this way of life.  Tiny moss spores float on the breeze, land in a nice, moist crevice protected from the sun, sprout and flourish.  They are off the grid.  They produce their own food through photosynthesis.  They collect moisture and the tiny bit of sun they need from their perch.

I imagine the tree bark makes an appealing location because of the moisture it collects and the shade the tree provides, but imagine the view!  As a tiny little plant, the view of the park before it must seem as impressive as a view of the Grand Canyon to us.  Granted, it might be better enjoyed if the moss actually had eyes.  But, how do we know the moss doesn’t have it’s own way of appreciating the view?

Some birds use moss in their nests.  At least, I think that’s true.  I was thinking of hummingbirds, but they actually use lichens woven together with spider webs, not moss.

A quick google turned up about 9 types of birds that use moss to line their nests, including the Robin.  So, there you have it.  The moss grows on the trees, the birds gather the moss to line their nests, probably contributing to propagation of the moss.  Birds benefit trees by eating insects off of them, spreading their seeds, and fertilizing them.  Therefore, moss benefits trees by attracting birds.  It’s an indirect symbiotic relationship.

Native Grass

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Grass seed heads on a dead leaf

Grass seed heads on a dead leaf

When Tisen and I walk the park, we pass an area planted with grasses that are apparently native to Tennessee.  I don’t know if they grow in Ohio–I don’t recognize them.

They grow in tall bunches and produce lovely seed heads that look decorative from late summer all the way through winter.  In the spring, the park landscape crew clears out the dead grass and they grow fresh green sprouts and start all over again.

Tisen is fond of these grasses.  They have the obvious attraction of providing a place to leave his scent that’s fairly high off the ground.  This, however, creates a problem related to the second reason Tisen is fond of these grasses:  he likes to scratch himself by throwing his body against them and/or swaying his rear end back and forth under their curving stems in a weird sort of move that makes one wonder exactly what his intentions are.

Now, the problem is in that he’s rubbing himself against the very same grasses he has previously . . . uh . . . watered.  Fortunately, he has the wisdom not to water and rub in the same place.  He wants to leave his scent behind, not carry it off on himself.  However, as I mentioned, we walk the park 3 times a day.  He doesn’t really keep track of where he “watered” on the previous walk.  As such, we sometimes return from walks with a slightly smelly dog, but at least not a wet one.

In any case, a handful of seed heads from these grasses had fallen onto the sidewalk.  Since those still attached to the grass were blowing around a rates of speed that just weren’t going to work for a macro shot, I set up my tripod and camera so the lens was pointed down and directly over the seed heads on the sidewalk.  No sooner than I got completely set up, my four-legged photographer’s assistant decided to stand on my subject.

So, for this particular shot, I arranged the seed heads.  I picked up one strip of seed heads along with a dark brown dead leaf and laid them down on the sidewalk where Tisen wouldn’t step on them.

They look better against the dark brown leaf than they would have on the gray sidewalk, so I guess Tisen really was assisting.  At least he didn’t eat them.

Tisen is actually a very good assistant.  Most of the time.  He patiently waits while I shoot.  He usually doesn’t walk on the subject unless it’s for a good reason.  And, he makes me feel perfectly safe walking around a park late on a winter afternoon carrying my equipment.

To tell the truth, I’ve always thought my gear would make a pretty good weapon in a worst case scenario, but I feel like I won’t have to risk damaging my camera with Tisen around.  Although, I’m not sure how seriously people take him as a protector when he’s carrying his yellow duck in his mouth.

The Seed Pod

Posted by dkrashb on
Seed Pod

Seed Pod

One of the unintended consequences of shooting macro is what might be called “everything is interesting syndrome.”  This happens when you suddenly realize you can take a picture of something miniature and see it in striking detail.  The fascination with just seeing that detail for the first time makes everything interesting.

Of course, setting up for a macro shot takes quite a bit of time.  At least, for me it does.  First, there’s spreading out the trash bag to have a dry spot to kneel on.  Second there’s the positioning of the tripod to get the lens at the optimal distance from the subject.  This is the part that seems to take me the longest.  Then there’s the realization that the subject you’re trying to shoot is hopelessly blowing in the wind and you could kneel there taking shots for hours and not one of them will be in focus.  This leads to trying to find a new subject that is not blowing in said wind.

That’s pretty much how I ended up shooting seed pods.  They were laying in various places on the ground near the yellow berries in yesterday’s post.  While not very colorful, there’s something hopeful about a seed pod–especially in late January.  I also liked the pattern of brown spots where the seeds caused the pod to bulge.  It doesn’t quite look natural to me, yet every seed pod had that same pattern.

I can’t explain why I like this photo.  It’s not particularly artistic.  It has no striking colors.  I like the framing less than I thought I did when I took it.  The only explanation I can come up with is the aspect of revelation.

The revelation of information I didn’t have before I stuck my lens about an inch from this seed pod and created an image of it.  The subtle stripes of light orange amongst the brown.  The almost black spots speckling the length of the pod.  The brown, dried “string” running around the outside of the pod.  The dipping surface of the pod that then swells again over the hidden seeds.

All of this detail suddenly visible when I couldn’t see it before–not with the naked eye, not with my glasses, not even looking through my lens.  Only seeing the image exposed the mysteries of the seed pod to me.

So, it is not the photo that I love.  It is the experience of having discovered something new to me.  The experience of uncloaking a simple seed pod is not unlike discovering a magnolia warbler for the first time.

It was a bird that had probably been within sight hundreds of times in my life but until the fateful day it perched on a branch outside my office window, I had no idea it existed.  Granted, the Magnolia Warbler is quite a bit more colorful than a seed pod.  But, the seed pod is far more cooperative when it comes to shooting–even with the wind.

In the Gut

Posted by dkrashb on
Forest-grown ice cream cones--really beautiful

Forest-grown ice cream cones–really beautiful

Is it 2 weeks straight of gray skies and pouring rain, the limited daylight, the fact that I just had yet another birthday, and/or the colder temperatures that make me draw into myself and reflect on life?  Perhaps it’s just what winter is for.  There is, after all, a lot of precedence around the notion of withdrawing for the winter to be reborn in the spring.  Seems to work well for the plants, anyway.

This dead branch became hot real estate for the local lichen community

This dead branch became hot real estate for the local lichen community

But in withdrawing, I find my gut talking to me.  So far, it hasn’t learned to speak English.  It seems to speak through general achy-ness.  It pokes at me like it’s really trying to tell me something, but I have no idea what it’s trying to say.  I envy people who know what it means to “listen to your gut.”

While technical Lichen doesn't "bloom," it sure looks like it does

While technical Lichen doesn’t “bloom,” it sure looks like it does

This is not new.  My gut started talking to me when I was a teenager.  I was pretty sure it was saying “Run!” every time I was on my way to school.  In more recent years, a friend who, shall we say was not-immersed-in-the-world-of-engineers, suggested I ask my gut what it needed.  Desperate to understand this mysterious, recurring pain, I tried her suggestion and sat quietly for a bit, taking deep breaths.  I thought to myself, “What do you need?” directing my attention to my gut.  The immediate response was, “More fiber.”  I laughed out loud.  But, more fiber didn’t quiet my gut.

Another ice cream cone

Another ice cream cone

What did quiet my gut was more relaxation, more presence in the moment, regular exercise, and learning to breathe.  So, why is my gut talking to me now?  Is it trying to tell me I should have been on some sort of elite detective team?  They all have talking guts, right?

Let’s think about this logically.  When stress happens, the body reacts.  If we ignore the stress, we don’t discharge it.  So, we start habitually tensing areas of the body where we react to stress.  My jaw is another good barometer of when I’m feeling stressed. It’s talking a lot too, and I don’t mean through my mouth.

My gut and my jaw are telling me I’m not dealing with stress effectively, but the problem is, I’m unclear about what the source of the stress is.  My job is not more stressful than usual.  Other than having moved a month ago, there haven’t been any major stress-creating events in my life.  So, if the sources of stress haven’t changed, I guess that means the discharge of stress has.

Tiny "blossoms" against moss

Tiny “blossoms” against moss

Well, let’s see . . . I haven’t ridden my bike in weeks.  I have only been making it to one yoga class a week.  I haven’t rowed for months.  I’ve only been hiking about 3x since October.  Hmm.  I think I’m starting to get the message now.

Rain, rain, go away!  I want to ride my bike today!

 

Fern-like Lichen producing another structure that looks like blooms

Fern-like Lichen producing another structure that looks like blooms

On the Subject of Enough

Posted by dkrashb on
Turkey's Tail

Turkey’s Tail

Enough is one of those concepts that seems deceptively simple.  When someone is serving up a giant portion of something, we say, “oh, that’s enough, thank you” to let them know we can’t eat that much.

But what is enough?

I'll lichen you if you lichen me

I’ll lichen you if you lichen me

According to Joe Dominquez and Vicki Robin, when it comes to money, “enough” is the intersection between being able to cover your needs/comforts and still having time and energy to enjoy them.  It’s the point when to obtain more would have diminishing returns.

According to Brene Brown, “enough” is about sufficiency:  “Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.”

More turkey's tail

More turkey’s tail

Yet, we are collectively bad at knowing when something is sufficient.  This may be an American culture thing, but let’s just take a look at cars.  How many Americans drive giant SUVs designed for off-roading?  How many actually drive off road.  Ever.  It’s like buying a mountain bike to ride on a paved bike path.  If you’ve ever ridden a mountain bike on pavement and then hopped on a road bike, you understand the physics behind “efficiency” in a deeply personal way.

The color purple

The color purple

A road bike is enough for riding on the road.  More rubber in big nobby tires, more bounce in soft springy shocks, more strength in a big frame all adds up to more work to go forward.  If you don’t need to ride through mud puddles, over tree stumps, or up incredibly steep slopes, a road bike is enough.

But where we get into trouble is the day we decide, after having purchased a beautiful road bike, we want to try mountain biking.  Soon, we have a mountain bike and a road bike hanging side-by-side in the garage.  Now, when we want the mountain bike, the road bike is in the way and vise versa.  It suddenly takes a certain amount of space and twice as much time to get the bike we “need” down and put it away again.  Before we know it we’ve gotten so irritated by getting one bike out of the way to get the other bike down, we’ve given up on biking all together.

Log covered in Turkey's Tail

Log covered in Turkey’s Tail

So, we decide both bikes are too much and we sell them.  But now, we are not getting enough exercise.

I don’t actually know where I’m going with this, but I think the message is the same in all cases.  Enough is a balance point.  Whether we’re talking about money, cars, bikes, or our sense of worthiness, it’s a balance between what we think we need and what we’re willing to give up to have it.

So, how do we know we are enough if we don’t know where that balance point is?

 

Not-flying Saucer

Not-flying Saucer

Another Year

Posted by dkrashb on
Don't know this one's name, but I like it--and the dew covered spider web

Don’t know this one’s name, but I like it–and the dew covered spider web

If New Year’s isn’t enough of a reminder that another year has passed, my birthday comes as a second reminder that time is flying.

I’d like to think that means I’m having fun.  And, I suppose I am.  But as I find myself crossing over the mid-point between 40 and 50, my breath catches in my throat as I choke back the shock.  How exactly did that happen?

A youthful wood ear

A youthful wood ear

Immediately, I start to list the endless list of things I haven’t done that I was sure I would have done long before now.  But I take a deep breath and exhale slowly.  I tell myself, “I am enough.”  I think that’s my new mantra.

Shelf-forming fungus against a bed of moss

Shelf-forming fungus against a bed of moss

So, if I am enough and my life is enough, what has my life been about?  In a word, I’d have to say if you take my life and add it all up, it comes to a work in progress.  And that’s enough.

Fungus or sculpture?

Fungus or sculpture?

In the interest of celebrating, here are random moments/experiences from my life I am grateful for:

  • Climbing trees and clinging to the branches while the tree swayed in the wind.
  • Swinging so high the swing would go above the top bar and then jerk on its way back down.
  • The warm feeling of sharing a smile.
  • Watching my nephews grow into amazing young men.
  • Friends.  Especially friends who know me and remind me my flawed and imperfect self is enough.
  • Every dog I have ever known and especially those I have shared a lifetime in dog years with.
  • The moments when I managed, in spite of the improbability, to do the exact right thing to connect with someone in way that left us both feeling like we mattered.
  • Fireflies and the childhood delight of watching them flash their lights against my skin just before floating off, back into the night.
  • Having parents who supported me when I took chances and helped nurse me back to health when the odds didn’t go my way.
  • Having followed my teenage dream of working with horses far enough to have no regrets over giving it up.
  • The day I knew, absolutely knew without a doubt, my husband loved me.
  • The feeling of being a millionaire when I bought my first piece of real furniture even though it was a damaged floor sample.
  • Soaring downhill on my bike with no hands, fingers spread wide to catch the wind whistling between them.
  • The foresight and caring of a friend who got me to the hospital in time to hold my mother’s hand while she died.
  • Standing on top of Half Dome feeling like I had just conquered the world.
  • Bad boyfriends without whom I couldn’t have appreciated good ones.
  • Having a father who could talk me through disassembling a garbage disposal to remove a clog and reassembling it over the phone.
  • The day I realized women should be allies, not enemies.
  • Every time my husband plays one of his songs for me.
A wood ear looking like it's getting ready to take a walk

A wood ear looking like it’s getting ready to take a walk

 

This is what happens when you live with too many regrets

This is what happens when you live with too many regrets