As I mentioned in a previous post there is a feeling of change in the air, as the seasons slowly shift. I feel a pressing need to store up all the remaining sights and sounds of summer. One way of doing this is to linger a little longer in the fields of wildflowers. This touch-me-not and salsify caught my eye.
I noticed the muted background before I really saw the flower rising against it and was struck by the start of the slow change to fall. I walked a little further and saw this Maple, always the first tree at the reserve to change colour every year. We’re still under heat advisories and the days are long but the slow approach of fall has begun.
Continuing with my Thursday blog theme of trying out the Fuji XT-1, I took these flowers with the same lens (23mm). I didn’t really think to use a wide angle lens on flowers but I tried it and was quite pleased with the results. I’ve only ever worked with one camera at a time, a DSLR but with a Fuji in my future that’s going to change!
In the first photo, the play of light and angle of the flower made me take notice. The hedge bindweed, a member of the morning glory family, doesn’t usually catch my eye. The bright yellow salsify is one of my favourites though and I thought the tall reed growing beside it was as perfect a natural arrangement as one could get.
Two more wildflowers that I look forward to seeing each summer. The flower in the first photo gets it’s name from the pistils in the middle of the flower which develop into heads of seeds with long fuzzy hairs. They look like smoke. The vibrant yellow of the sunflower attracts me as it did the bee. Like many other areas this summer, we are experiencing drought-like conditions, you may notice the heat stress on the flower’s leaves.
This photo was taken on a windy day, and gives the impression that there were fields of chives growing and not just the small patch I saw in the garden. This tasty plant produces such an attractive flower.
We’ve been doing more photo walks in the city, as wildlife at the nearby reserve is pretty scarce right now. We’re taking our time in areas we normally tend to rush through and are finding things of interest and beauty. The plants in the first two photos would look at home in the tropics, lush and dense but they are growing in some containers on a patio. The third photo is of a flower that made its way through a hedge and I liked the strong contrast of white and green. When I set out on one of these walks I never know what I might see and my 24-70mm lens gives me some latitude for nature as well as street scenes.
