I’ve got, buried on kramerwetzel.com, perhaps in an archive, a couple of Bluebonnet pictures from the early Spring of 2004. Notable, to me, because I can recall the precise conditions under which I managed those shots, and then, both those pictures, or two out of a set of five, maybe, two became classics. Got a couple of those pictures printed, full-size, and framed. One of the images I still carry around on my phone, I liked it that much.
It’s a single Bluebonnet, framed by indistinct clouds and green grass, a simple shot, and it was done in Austin, nice spring morning, before I hiked seven or eight miles around the Eastern Loop of the trail. I reached down, with my left hand, and I snapped a couple of quick pictures with the camera I had at that time. Hardware itself isn’t important. It was an entirely lucky shot. The texture and detail of that single flower was visible and in focus, in great detail, able to be printed as a high-resolution 8×10. What amazed me was how a cheap camera could produce such striking detail.
That single moment, that single image? That’s the trigger point, the very moment when it all changed. Since then, I’ve been on a small quest to learn more about flower photography. As it turns out, it’s a lot more difficult than it appears to be. That’s part of the reason why I have so many images of flowers, just trying to match that one lucky shot from years ago.
More attempts at flowers, are here, here, and, here.
A spring afternoon in Austin, the sun shining just right, enough of a bounce in a my step to make it all come together? Might be magic that can’t be duplicated, why it’s magic, not method.
And a subscription to astrofish.net? Still cheaper.
And it isn’t even spring, yet–just coming on winter in this neck of the woods..er..freeways.
southside.