There’s something about this photo that keeps me coming back to it, and it’s only partially related to the subject. I mean, of course the single solitary prairie fire flower is what immediately catches your eye (well, mine anyway) but beyond that a couple of elements in the background just hook me and I’m curious what you think about them too. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s just start at the beginning. I shot this while I was in my neighbor’s field, the same place I took this shot about a week earlier. This time it was me, my wife, and our two kids who all went over to see the hundreds of butterflies that were floating throughout the field, landing on flowers for a few seconds to sip some nectar before lifting off into the air again. The four of us spent a while just walking around looking at everything and commenting on the sights, sounds, and smells of the field while I had shot a few pics with my Nikon D750 and 105mm f/2.8 macro lens. My goal was to get a photo of a single butterfly on a flower, but every time I approached one it would fly away before I got close enough to snap a picture. No matter though, it was time spent with family which means, in the end, it was time well spent.
I did, however, notice this single prairie fire flower standing tall all by itself in a small clearing of wild onion flowers and, seeing the brilliant backlight on the central stalk, I just knew I had to take its picture. The flower almost seems like it’s glowing, and has a sense of live and vibrance that really struck me. I got down low to the ground, adjusted the aperture of my lens to f/4.8, and started taking pictures. I got what I was looking for, and really appreciated the billowing clouds of light in the background as well as the white wild onion flowers on the edges of the frame, but what really hit me when I was looking through the shots in Lightroom was the way some of the flowers in the background almost seemed like duplicates of each other. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s super cool to see :)
For example, if you look to the left of the subject about halfway to the edge of the frame you’ll see a green flower stem that looks…well, it almost looks like a ghost. It’s one single stem that looks like two, and it’s almost certainly due to some kind of refracting properties within the camera lens. Once you see it you’ll notice other areas of the frame where similar things happen, and it’s like nothing I have ever encountered in one of my images before. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know how to replicate it…all I do know is that I like it and it elevated this image well beyond anything I could have planned.
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