“Often, the primary subject of a photograph becomes secondary. The natural world is not static and scenes shift.” – Ed Lehming

Late last week I was hiking through one of my regular trails, checking out the progress of the spring wildflowers, not sure what to expect. As I’ve noted over the past few weeks, this has been a very unusual spring, with warm temperatures, so the usual ‘schedule’ of things is a bit off. Every day seems to bring some new surprise since the plants have their own timing lately.

I was enjoying some Spring Beauties (yet to be shared) and noted a small splash of white just to my left. It was the first bloom of Bloodroot, which I was expecting to bloom this past week. My timing must have been just right, as it had only recently opened, it’s leafy ‘cloak’ still tightly closed, with just the blossom to mark its presence.

In the time it took me to set up my camera for macro work the blossom had opened even more and several others in the vicinity were also starting to bloom. It’s an amazing thing to be present right at the moment this kind of thing takes place. I returned my focus to the original blossom and began composing the image.

When I make macro images, I’m very deliberate in trying to get the shot extremely sharp, so I set my focus on the part of the flower that I want in very sharp focus. Being this close up, the camera’s focal range, even at f/14 is very narrow and it does not take much for an image to be out of focus. Since I was focussed on just the pistil and stamen, with secondary focus on the petals I was not even looking at the rest of the flower or anything else going on around me. I was quite surprised when I got home to edit the images that I had inadvertently captured the spider crawling from behind the petals, no doubt setting himself up to make a meal some unsuspecting tiny fly drawn to the blossom by the fresh nectar.

I know he came from behind the flower because I shot a series of five images and could see his slow and deliberate progress in that series of shots.

Unfortunately, because I was focussing on the flower parts, the spider is ever so slightly out of focus, but I thought it made for an interesting, though accidental, image and does capture the reality of springtime – everything is out for a meal after a long winter’s hibernation and these early blooms are the perfect breakfast table.

Nikon D800
Tamron SP AF 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 (272ENII)@90mm
1/400 sec, f/14, ISO 800