1306_1818 Plains Prickly Pear
Here's another Prickly Pear bloom, not quite open, salmon-pink, almost abstract in this view.
Although I don't remember making this shot, nearly ten years ago, I do remember the day. Late June, peak of the spring-summer transition. I did a long solo hike among the buttes, starting at dawn. Flowers, insects, landscapes.
This image - overlooked for a decade - is more about a feeling than anatomical details. Can I get to the essence of the flower without really showing all that much of the flower? After more than 60 years of photography, its inherent mystery still captivates. What is this response to beauty that we all share and seek out?
Many years ago, one of my students - who just happened to be the head of a university chemistry department - wanted to know "the rule" for photographing backlit flowers. The formula. I told her the truth: there is none. It's more a game of intuition. The deeper your connection, the truer your result (assuming you have a grasp of how your camera works and how to make the technical choices to produce a desired outcome). With the entire vast green prairie stretching around for miles in every direction - rolling hills and flat-topped buttes, steep ravines and clusters of wildflowers, great bowl of blue sky above dotted with puffy cumulus clouds, cracked and dried clay soil pushing up native grasses, spiders and insects darting here and there for cover as monstrous hiking boots clomp past, the ever present possibility of a wildlife encounter (deer, bison, pronghorn, coyote, rattlesnake, golden eagle), all of it in constant, flowing change - how does the eye and mind come to rest on a single emerging cactus flower, and visualize a photo in the raw material there? I don't know. But I do know there's no formula.
Addendum: After writing and posting this, looking through my Inbox I found a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who suggested that creativity "...consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind."
Receptivity. Letting the world in... the spirit, if you will. Pretty good clues as to what's going on. It starts inside oneself. Set the table properly, and the banquet is yours.
Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2013 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
1306_1818 Plains Prickly Pear
Here's another Prickly Pear bloom, not quite open, salmon-pink, almost abstract in this view.
Although I don't remember making this shot, nearly ten years ago, I do remember the day. Late June, peak of the spring-summer transition. I did a long solo hike among the buttes, starting at dawn. Flowers, insects, landscapes.
This image - overlooked for a decade - is more about a feeling than anatomical details. Can I get to the essence of the flower without really showing all that much of the flower? After more than 60 years of photography, its inherent mystery still captivates. What is this response to beauty that we all share and seek out?
Many years ago, one of my students - who just happened to be the head of a university chemistry department - wanted to know "the rule" for photographing backlit flowers. The formula. I told her the truth: there is none. It's more a game of intuition. The deeper your connection, the truer your result (assuming you have a grasp of how your camera works and how to make the technical choices to produce a desired outcome). With the entire vast green prairie stretching around for miles in every direction - rolling hills and flat-topped buttes, steep ravines and clusters of wildflowers, great bowl of blue sky above dotted with puffy cumulus clouds, cracked and dried clay soil pushing up native grasses, spiders and insects darting here and there for cover as monstrous hiking boots clomp past, the ever present possibility of a wildlife encounter (deer, bison, pronghorn, coyote, rattlesnake, golden eagle), all of it in constant, flowing change - how does the eye and mind come to rest on a single emerging cactus flower, and visualize a photo in the raw material there? I don't know. But I do know there's no formula.
Addendum: After writing and posting this, looking through my Inbox I found a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who suggested that creativity "...consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind."
Receptivity. Letting the world in... the spirit, if you will. Pretty good clues as to what's going on. It starts inside oneself. Set the table properly, and the banquet is yours.
Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2013 James R. Page - all rights reserved.