Dots of color.....

A few days ago I was in northwest Wisconsin on my way to Pattison State Park. I wasn't familiar with the road I was on and found myself driving past a prairie like grassland with individual pine trees sprinkled across the landscape. Every so often I thought I was seeing vibrant dots of orange amid the green grass.  

 

I slowed down to better see what the color was, and finally pulled over to find beautiful wood lilies in full bloom under big billowy clouds.

 

 

 

Lucky for me the flowers were growing at a state wildlife area and the land was publicly owned.

 

 

 

So I grabbed a camera and a couple of lenses and went to see what I could do.

 

 

 

I had a 180mm macro on, but quickly realized I wanted to capture the flowers in their environment not tight images of the blooms.

 

 

 

I switched to a 10-22mm lens and got low to the ground to try and capture the color of the flowers and the drama of the sky above.

 

 

 

It was 75 degrees and got pretty hot laying in the grass and waiting for interesting clouds to form and blow over.

 

 

 

I tried a few images with fill flash and a reflector off to the side to bounce some light under the flowers.

 

 

 

I spent almost two hours trying to capture the colors and skies.

 

 

 

Before I left I did take the time to isolate individual flowers with the macro lens.

 

 

 

The breeze was pretty persistent and it took some patience to make sharp images but,

 

 

 

the time was well spent and I was really happy with the images I captured.

 

 

 

I'm thankful for happy accidents. Like taking an unknown road and finding vibrant dots of color.

















Coneflower colors....

 

My son and I spent a little time at the UW Arboretum in Madison Wisconsin and found this purple coneflower.

 

 

 

 

 

It was an overcast day which made it easy to shoot flowers and get nice saturated colors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really like the oranges, greens, and pinks.

 

 

 

I found these raindrops suspended on a spider's web just a couple of inches above the ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I go out with a macro lens and a little time I'm surprised by just how many beautiful photos I can come back with.

 

Fourth of July...

 

fireworks.

 

 

I was in Ashland Wisconsin on the fourth and here are some of the images I captured.

 

 

 

I only had a 100-400mm lens with me which limited the compositions I could make.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ashland is located on the south shore of Lake Superior and they shoot the fireworks over the lake.

 

 

 

Normally that would lend itself to lots of pictures with color reflected in the water, but with the big lens I really didn't get that this year.

 

 

 

 

 

All I could really do is isolate shells as they burst in the sky and hope for the best.

 

 

 

 

 

I set the camera on bulb and shot at f/10 for about 2 seconds each exposure.

 

 

 

 

 

I hadn't planned to photograph the fireworks this year, so I just grabbed the camera and headed toward the lake shore.

 

 

 

I found a spot amid some trees and weeds, set up the tripod and did the best I could.

 

 

 

 

 

It started to rain pretty good and the bugs were bad so I quit shooting before they got to the finale.

 

 

  



 

I hope your fourth turned out as well as mine.

 



 



They say a picture's worth....

 

a thousand words. So in this post I'm just going to show a lot of pictures and use very few words.

 

 

A field of orange hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum L)flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The yellow flowers are Canada hawkweed (Hieracium canadense)

 

 

 

 

An oxeye daisy in the same small field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little patience while waiting for the wind to stop paid big dividends.

 

 

 

A fog/steam blew off of Day Lake and across the road as we headed home.