“Seeing nature really close up reveals so much more. Fine details and endless variation brings curiosity and encourages learning.” – Ed Lehming

It seems the more time I spend observing and photographing the forests around me, the more I am drawn into the fascinating variety and complex systems that they present. Yesterday was another nice day, with sunshine and comfortable temperatures which meant that some of the blossoms which had been stalled now started opening up again. I found new clusters of Bloodroot blooming, when I thought their brief season had already passed.

Bloodroot has a special place for me, it is the first ‘surprise’ wildflower that I discovered in an area that I thought I was already familiar with. A few years back, a friend and I went for a hike in mid-April. He wanted to show me the annual Rainbow Trout migration at a local stream. I warned him that I may slow him down, since I wanted to get some photos of the wildflowers. It’s at this time that I saw my first Bloodroot. I noticed it as a bright white splash among the rusty leaves. At the time, it seemed like the most perfect flower I had ever seen. The petals where the whitest white I had ever seen, centred with a bright yellow anthers. I could not believe I had not noticed these before. Since then, Bloodroots are must on my list of spring wildflowers and I anticipate there blooming every year, shortly after the Coltsfoot blooms.

The Bloodroot is part of a regular spring progression, as each species blooms and matures in its specified time, one followed by another, with some awesome overlap when they all bloom at the same time. The beginning of such a time was yesterday, when I set out to revisit some Wake Robins, thinking the Bloodroots where ‘done’. I found a few near perfect specimens. Well, near perfect in my mind, and I set out to make a few images , including this close-up that really nicely shows the details of the flower’s components. Of course, just as I snapped the shutter, a light breeze flipped one of the petals up, just to keep it interesting.

I’m shooting at a fairly high ISO because even a slight movement of air will blur these narrow aperture close ups, so I need a fast shutter speed to compensate. All lessons learned over many failures.

Nikon D800
Tamron SP AF 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 (272ENII)@90mm
1/640 sec, f/20, ISO 800