For as long as I have owned DSLR cameras, all the way back to the good ol’ Nikon D200, I have enjoyed taking pictures of a few specific subjects around the same time each year. Crocus and magnolia flowers in spring, butterflies in the fall, squirrels and geese near Theta Pond…anyone who has been following Weekly Fifty for any length of time has no doubt seen pictures of such things and, hopefully, enjoyed looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them. Add to the list the seed pods of the Golden Raintree that you see here, which are fascinating on a normal day but particularly mesmerizing after a good soaking from above with cloudy, overcast skies casting even, diffused lighting as far as the eye can see. Such was the case way back in Summer 2013 with this picture, and these little balloonlike structures continue to be one of my favorite photography subjects today.
I saw this scene, the one featured above, while walking across the OSU campus with my Nikon D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens the day after a mild thunderstorm blew through the area. Conditions were just about perfect for outdoor photography, and as I walked past this tree I could not help but stop and snap a couple shots with my camera. I went with a tried-and-true, simple-yet-effective rule-of-thirds setup here, with the main subject on the right and another seed pod in the background roughly along the left vertical. I shot this at f/6.7 to get a good combination of subject sharpness and background blur, though I think my go-to macro aperture of f/8 might have yielded better results…though probably not by much. (Read: I am very happy with how this turned out, and don’t mean to let my small nitpicks overshadow the rest of the image.) The rich, deep reds and bright yellows nicely complement each other, with the dark greens lending a sense of texture and context to the background.
It’s a good photo to be sure, but to really see what I like about it, and what makes it vault to very near the top of my favorite shots of golden raintree seeds, is the tiny, almost microscopic water droplets on the leaf in the foreground. If you don’t see them, I recommend clicking or tapping the shot so you can see the full-size original on Flickr, and then view it at the largest possible size. The minuscule drops clinging like velcro to the red vertical wall of the seed pod are something I almost never see, and even more rarely, take the time to notice or consider. Those drops encapsulate many things that I enjoy about taking close-up shots, and they serve as a good reminder to stop and ponder the world around me, and remember that there really are wonders of creation as far, or as close, as the eye can see.
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