Category: Macro

11-05-16 Another World

Can you feel your shirt touching your shoulder right now? (read and see more)

By Scott Shephard

If you drove by these plumeria flowers every day as you entered your driveway, you probably wouldn’t see them. Like so many things that we see, feel, hear or smell all of the time, even beautiful flowers become white noise. To get you to consider white noise, here are two tests:

1) List 5 features of the street side of your neighbor-to-the-left’s house. If you’ve lived in your neighborhood for a year or for decades, you’ve probably seen your neighbor’s house hundreds or even thousands of times. My guess is that while you’ve seen your neighbors house, you’ve never really looked at it. The features of the house are likely examples of white noise to you.

2)If you are wearing a shirt right now, what does it feel like? The skin is a profoundly sensitive organ but because it is in constant contact with something all of the time, the sensations become white noise.

So here’s my point: if you take your camera outside and, with your neighbor’s permission, take 10 photos of various features of the front of their house, those features cease to be white noise. They might even become essential and even fascinating. They might also become something you notice every time you drive by the house. The same could be said for your shirt. Can you feel it touching your shoulders and back? What does it feel like?

So back to these beautiful plumeria . . . Because I had my camera in hand when I walked by them, because I had only been in this neighborhood for a day and because they were new and foreign to my experience, I couldn’t help but notice them. And now you see them too.

Such is the power of photography. As for feeling your shirt, I hope the sensations they cause generally remain as white noise. Otherwise, it will drive you crazy . . . .

How about a view of the neighborhood and a couple other takes on these flowers?:

 

Canon 5DIII 1/750s f/2.8 ISO400 100mm

07-06-16 Aspirations?

What do you want to be when you grow up? (read more)

By Scott Shephard

Generally, when I go looking for photo opportunities, I look for color, texture, and lines, among other things. On the morning I took this photo I was first looking for small things that are easily missed and then for color, texture, etc.

When I am taking photos, I am thinking about composition and framing. It’s only later, when I am back in the “darkroom,” that I think about potential meaning. Today’s photo made me think about how many things start as flowers, including ponderosa pines like this one. (You are looking at baby pine cones.)

It also makes me think of aspirations – things that we hope to be, do and see. Humans can have aspirations but I don’t think trees can. Humans, to a fair degree, can control what they become. Pine trees can’t. It is inevitable that pine cone flowers will become pine cones. Beyond that, who knows? External forces are in total control.

Canon 5DIII 1/125s f/4.0 ISO500 100mm

06-19-16 New Life

These leaves turn sunlight into acorns. (read more)

By Scott Shephard

I decided that after posting three black and white photos, I needed to add a splash of color to my blog. And, after yesterday’s fairly heavy subject, I decided to offer something “fresh.” So here are oak leaves aglow in the morning sun in the Black Hills. I took this photo two weeks ago and I would guess that the leaves are about a month old. And they are hard at work.

The word that springs to mind when I look at this picture is “photosynthesis,” which has always intrigued me. In the case of these leaves, they ultimately turn sunlight into acorns, which, when they aren’t feeding squirrels and chipmunks, are making new oak trees. A leaf may be nice to look at but don’t forget that it’s also a machine.

Ponder that for a while, my friendly reader. . . . 

Canon 5DIII 1/125s f/4.5 ISO200 100mm

04-07-16 Columbine

Another hint of things to come. . . (read more)

By Scott Shephard

Unfortunately, when some of us hear the word “Columbine,” we think of the school shooting that happened in Colorado in April, 2009. And I’m sorry to bring that up . . . .

But if you want to think of something brighter, think “delicate flower” and think of this picture. The name columbine comes from the Latin word for dove, a bird which produces a soothing sound and which is the symbol of peace. I like that. Further, if you didn’t know it, the columbine flower is the state flower of Colorado.

Canon D60 1/40s f/5.6 ISO200 120mm (35mm eq:192mm)

04-06-16 Rite of Spring

These small flowers are dangerous non-conformists.

By Scott Shephard

As I look out of my office window, I am more conscious than ever of the fact that the building covenants in our neighborhood are what I am calling “anti-color.” That translates as “earth tones” which translates as “dull.”

Add heavy clouds, light haze and mostly brown grass to the nearly colorless painting schemes and you have a prescription for the early spring South Dakota blues.

A pill might help. But how about taking in bright, purple crocus flowers, which seem to flaunt the color covenants in our part of town instead? You have to get down on your hands and knees to see them as they are pictured here. But why not bow down to this wonderful little iconoclast?

Canon 5DII 1/250s f/3.2 ISO400 100mm 

03-25-16 Real Abstract

Can an object be real and abstract at the same time?

By Scott Shephard

To be “real” and “abstract” at the same time seems like a contradiction. But I think you are looking at an example. This flowering plant, which I photographed at Indian Canyons in southern California, is certainly real. What creates the abstraction has something to do with my use of focus and point of view and much to do with the fact that I’ve turned the photo into black and white.

I guess I like the ambiguity of the image. If I’m lucky, the ambiguity requires the viewer to impose meaning based on his or her own perceptions and experience. It’s like life itself.

Canon 5DIII 1/250s f/4.0 ISO250 102mm

(For those who need something less ambiguous, I offer two other views of this plant.)

01-11-14 Pretty In Pink

2014 01-11 Pretty In Pink by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard
2014 01-11 Pretty In Pink by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard

If I had a true scientific interest in coral, I would have answers to the many things I wonder about when I look at it. I wonder, for example, about the many ways that coral seems to organize itself. I wonder about the age of coral we find along the shore. And in the case of this piece, I wonder what the pink substance is.

But I don’t have a scientific interest in coral and I don’t seek answers. In the case of coral I take comfort in my wonder.

Canon 5DIII 1/640s f/5.0 ISO200 100mm

01-10-14 Morning Joe

2014 01-10 Morning Jo by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard
2014 01-10 Morning Jo by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard

This photo is entirely serendipitous. As I was filling my coffee cup from the airpot I keep next to my computer, I noticed the intricate pattern of bubbles that each jet of coffee was creating. I quickly grabbed my camera and took a few photos. A perfectionist would have spend more time in an attempt to get a more artistic pattern of bubbles. But I had things to do and I needed my coffee fix.

Canon 5DIII 1/50s f/2.8 ISO1600 100mm