“From the compacted blanket of last year’s leaves, bright and beautiful wildflowers erupt, pushing aside the reminders of what was, and revealing was it to be.” – Ed Lehming

Continuing the theme of this year’s early spring wildflowers, I present a beautiful pink cluster of early Hepatica. For this image, I got down low to the ground. My goal was to show the blossoms rising above the leaf litter and show some of the background forest as well.

One of the unique characteristics of some of these early bloomers is that there are no leaves yet, the plant simply puts out flowers, no doubt drawing on a reserve of energy stored form last autumn. The leaves will begin to form in the next few days. These early blossoms also provide a much needed food source for bees and other pollinators. As I lay on the ground, making this image, I could not help but notice the multitude of small flies buzzing eagerly around the blossoms. It’s something I have observed when doing macro shots with my full camera rig, but it was not till I saw it from this low angle perspective that I realized just how many there actually were.

This year’s Hepaticas have been a big draw for me, firstly because they bloomed so very early, at a time when there really is not much choice in photographic subjects, but also because there seems to be a broad variety of colours this year. Hepatica do have a lot of variations, mainly based on soil composition, ranging between pure white, to pale blue, purples, and shades of pink, like these.

Once more, this is an image made with my iPhone 12 Pro. It was made on a day that I had not expected much in the way of new plant growth, so I travelled light. I did return the next day with my D800 and macro setup and was able to capture some nice, super-sharp images that I will also share in future posts. The iPhone quality has been such a blessing, since I can create images like this with great success where in prior years, this would simply have been a memory that I was unable to capture.

iPhone 12 Pro @ 4.2 mm
1/1082 sec, f/1.6, ISO 32