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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/2000 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Perfect Bowl Shape
Roadside flower in the mountains of northern Nara Prefecture, Japan
I've got enough backlog of photos I want to share to fill a year's worth of posts, and my running post rate for the last few years is about one post a day, but lately I've just not been interested in writing, so my posts of late have been infrequent. We might, however, get a spike in posts for a while, because today I took a scooter ride into the mountains of northern Nara Prefecture (south of Kyoto, between Kyoto and Osaka), and had a great time, both photographically and personally.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 78mm — 1/3200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Little Blue Barn
Not common in Japan
As you can see, there were a bazillion flowers at the side of the road, but the one I photographed (and I photographed only the one) really stood out as having a perfectly curved bowl shape. It reminded me of the moss-covered oblong stone ball on top of a stone lantern seen here, which also had a shape that just captivated me. (I have a bazillion photos concentrating on that moss-covered stone, but I've yet found one worthy to post.)
The flower is Cosmos bipinnatus (native to Mexico and southern US) and, yes, there is something very appealing to a photographer (as well as to gardeners) about its apparent simplicity – deceptive too, as the close-up reveals so much complexity !