I recently came into a little extra cash by doing some book formatting work and I blew it all on the Canon EF 100mm f2.8 macro lens. I received the lens several weeks ago, but COVID-19 shutdowns and then some personal issues kept me from using it. The week before last, I was able to take it on an outing to San Angelo State Park. Here are five frames.
Fluffy
This looks like the head of thistle that has gone past its flowering stage. The other heads nearby look like thistles, but they were too small to be Texas Thistles. I confess, at the time I wasn’t worried about what it was, I was thinking “Oooh, pretty!” If you know what this is, I’d like to hear from you.
If you are interested in Texas wildflowers, here are some links: The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, The Index of Texas Wildflower Pictures, US Wildflower Database for Texas, and Plants of Texas Rangelands. Enjoy!
Prickly Pear Cactus Flower
Here is a nice cactus flower complete with insect accompaniment.
We set out on our San Angelo State Park expedition with two goals: to get out of the house and to use the new macro lens on targets of opportunity. Most of the subjects we found were flowers. (They don’t scurry off when you approach.) I used a Canon 6DII with the aforementioned Canon 100mm macro. Although I have a brand new focusing rail that I wrote about in a previous post, Stereo Project, I didn’t use it on this outing. Instead, I used a monopod and focused by rocking the camera back and forth. We had bright sunlight so I was able to shoot at f11 for most shots, giving me a little depth of field. Maybe next time I’ll use the focusing rail and a tripod.
Purple Horsemint
A lifetime ago, when I was in graduate school, I would go out to a ranch in central Texas near Brenham and visit a friend, Mike D. We had the crazy idea that we were going to make a picture book for flower identification. At the time, in the mid 1970’s, it was a radical idea. Flower identification books for weekend gawkers were mostly drawings and didn’t show many flowers. The serious books had descriptions of the plants that only bontanists could love or understand and, by the way, no pictures. Mike and I wanted something in between, more flowers and actual photographs to help identification. Life and lack of botanical skill stalled the project. Then Audubon started to come out with photo identification books for birds and later for flowers and we were good and truly scooped.
But for several springs I set out with my trusty Olympus OM-1 (see my post, Ode to the OM-1), a Vivitar 90mm macro f2.8 (I couldn’t afford the excellent Olympus 90mm f2 macro.) and a monopod that I made out of a leg from a broken tripod and a cheap ball head. (I still have this monopod.) I shot mostly Kodachrome slides and took hundreds of shots. I have the slides in boxes around here somewhere, maybe I’ll do a retrospective if they haven’t degraded too badly.
Mexican Hat
Very festive. Makes me feel like a party.
So macro photography in west Texas can be a challenge. You have to deal with the usual very narrow depth of field, which means that you have to use large f stops to get a satisfying portion of the shot in focus. Large f stops mean slow shutter speeds, which means monopods or tripods or flashes, oh my! Then, when everything is perfect, the good old west Texas wind comes up and blows everything to hell and gone.
I was lucky during this outing: the wind was minimal. The best solution is likely some sort of flash getup to stop motion and provide enough light for f16-f22. I’m experimenting, but I haven’t hit on a solution I like yet.
White and Yellow
Again, I have no idea what this is. Help! I am hoping for another expedition in the near future. Maybe I’ll find a critter!
Bonus Frame – Not a Flower
Flowers are pretty. So I took a lot of flowers. However, I did take a few non-flower subjects. Here is a vertical piece of wire connecting the strands of a barbed wire (that’s “bob wore” if you want to sound like a native) fence. It was just luck that I didn’t capture any barbs. I liked the red dirt background in this shot.
These photos were taken with a Canon 6DII wearing the Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens. The photos were processed from RAW files using Darktable, which is free darkroom software for Windoze, Mac, and Linux.
I like the bob wore best. All I know about the flowers is “Oh, so pretty.”
Thanks! “Bob Wore” was the arty contribution to the outing. Mostly I was after targets of opportunity, which turned out to be flowers.