Little Flowers, Little Context
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Sorta.... well, Small -- Natalie's Uncle Tom's place -- Transfer, Pennsylvania, USA -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/11, ISO 1400 — map & image datanearby photos
Sorta.... well, Small

Since finally getting a real macro lens (a Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5), my world has opened up to enjoying some of the smaller things in (and forms of) life. Sometimes, such as with the photo above, a complete lack of scale pretty much kills the “oh, tiny!” appeal, especially these days when the same shallow depth of field can be achieved with a tilt lens or the Brenizer method.

Zooming back a bit somehow helps establish the smallness of the scale...

Natalie's Uncle Tom's place -- Transfer, Pennsylvania, USA -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 560 — map & image datanearby photos

... but without context, it's still lacking something. We like context, and search for it, and feel odd when we don't get it.

The context in this case is a bush near the corner of my youngest brother's wife's mother's brother's house, which I had occasion to visit today:

Natalie's Uncle Tom's place -- Transfer, Pennsylvania, USA -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image datanearby photos

So, perhaps context isn't all it's cracked up to be. 🙂

You can barely see the scarlet pink in the photo above, as most of the plant was bare:

Natalie's Uncle Tom's place -- Transfer, Pennsylvania, USA -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 1800 — map & image datanearby photos

But oddly, there were a few sections that held baby-new growth...

Natalie's Uncle Tom's place -- Transfer, Pennsylvania, USA -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 3600 — map & image datanearby photos

... so it seems the plant had no idea what season it was.

Curl f/8 not as helpful as I had hoped -- Natalie's Uncle Tom's place -- Transfer, Pennsylvania, USA -- Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 3200 — map & image datanearby photos
Curl
f/8 not as helpful as I had hoped

One comment so far...

Not that you asked, but I’d say that was a Buddleia davidii, or butterfly bush. They are sweetly fragrant so if you didn’t notice the aroma up close then perhaps I’m wrong. Love the pics and the site.

I didn’t ask because I hoped my mom or my blog’s resident botanist would chime in, but you beat them to it! —Jeffrey

— comment by Andy on August 21st, 2010 at 12:03am JST (13 years, 7 months ago) comment permalink
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