Henbit Sunset

One thing about living in central Oklahoma that I never knew until we moved here in 2009 is that most homeowners wage a continual war against the little purple plant you see here. Henbit is a scourge among front lawn everywhere, and as the days lengthen and the sun crawls back from the winter doldrums, this plant inevitable returns to almost any grassy area untouched by the herbicide sprayed by the truckload by homeowners and groundskeepers all over town. My wife and I have never been ones to douse our yard with weed killer and instead just kind of do our best to ignore the henbit and other similar annoyances until they fade away by the start of summer, and that means we get to (have to?) see these little violet buds all over the place in springtime. And when my brother and his family were visiting in mid-March, I discovered how beautiful these can be as photo subjects.

There’s only a few minutes each day when you can take a picture like this one, and it’s all due to the angle of the sun. This henbit flower is usually found, as is the case here, about 2-4 inches from the ground. During most of the day the sun is at too high of an overhead angle to get the nice backlighting you see here, and in the early morning or evening as the sun is at just the right angle it quickly moves away from that position rendering this type of picture nearly impossible. As my brother and I were walking around outside while our kids threw frisbees and kicked soccer balls, he made a remark about the purple flowers and it got both of us thinking about possible macro shots. I got way down low (I can’t remember if I actually laid on the ground, but I might have. I know my brother did.) and dialed in a pretty small aperture of f/19 and took a few shots. It quickly became clear that the main issue here was the angle of my camera, not the sun. I had to shoot almost directly into the sun in order to capture the backlighting, but also be careful to not wash out the image with excess lens flare. After some experimentation I got the shot you see here, and I think it works really well.

This is the final of a series of pictures that I’m posting here on Weekly Fifty from my brother’s visit, and I can confidently say that I did indeed learn an awful lot while he was here. Not necessarily from a photography perspective, but more about observing the world around me and taking advantage of opportunities I often miss. Seeing the world through fresh eyes, especially my own yard, helped me find picture ideas I have overlooked hundreds of times over the years. And besides that, it’s just super cool to hang out with my brother and his family :)