There’s a field not too far from our house that my wife and I walk past almost every day. It’s usually unmoved, which is likely intentional on the part of the owners, since it gives the grasses, flowers, and animals that live among them, a chance to flourish where they otherwise might not if the green space was more maintained. It’s a pretty large open area where houses will probably be built someday, but hopefully not for a good long while. Though the way things are going around here, you never know. #fingerscrossed
This field is also a good spot for taking pictures, and a couple of my favorites were shot here over the past several years including one of a butterfly resting on top of an Indian Paintbrush flower in the morning dew. A few weeks ago as we walked past the exact same spot, my wife remarked that it looked like rain and sure enough, a thunderstorm rolled through overnight. The next morning was a bit too wet to bike to work so I took the car, but made a slight detour to the field with my camera in hand hoping to get a good picture of one of the flowers.
Nature, as it turned out, did not disappoint. I got to the spot just as the sun was barely showing itself on the horizon, and found this flower rising above the grass which made for an excellent photo opportunity. I experimented with a variety of exposure settings and eventually settled on f/19 which seems a bit small, but the more I looked at the images in Lightroom the less I liked the ones at wider apertures because, while the flower was fairly sharp, the rest of the image was so blurry as to be almost entirely incomprehensible. I also like how the trees on the edges of the frame help provide a bit of (what else?) context while also serving to contain the sky just a bit. And the orange glow on the horizon as the sun pokes through the clouds is icing on the photography cake.
Some of my shots are the result of serendipity, and others only come about after a great deal of careful planning. This was a bit of both, and a good reminder that good things come to those who wait…but also those who plan ahead.
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