Words4It

Put yourself into the head of this ant on a hibiscus bloom in downtown Brighton. After the rainstorm, it had to walk around the raindrops to get to the flower’s nectar. Imagine if humans had to do that. It would sure stymie our day-to-day schedules. See the larger version for the whole flower.

The pastel yellow-green buds on this 18″ mound are just beginning to change color and roar into bloom. It’s a sedum but I don’t know the variety. This close up looks like a close up of an oriental rug with it’s tight placement and muted tones. Click the image or this link to see a larger image which includes the entire 8″ flower cluster.

Stella de Oro is a popular daylily because of its long blooming season; it starts early and blooms through fall. It was hybridized in 1975 so it’s still a youngster in the eyes of daylily fanciers. This one was photographed at night in Brighton, Michigan.

Some photographers take a spray bottle with them to add an oh-so-beatiful dew-covered look to flowers and insects before they shoot. I haven’t had to do that. First is was the sprinkler system. Now it’s the heavens. :-) I had to shake off as much water as I could so the peonies’ flimsy stems would support the large flowers. They were almost touching the ground when I arrived after a downpour.

I found flowers with the palest of colors on single blooms. They included light grays, whites, yellows, pinks, and mauve. That’s quite a range! The flower is shown in its entirety, below. I’ve got more good shots of peonies from that night. I’ll post them next winter when colorless days bore me so I don’t bore you with too many flowers now. Click either shot to see glorious detail.

Salmony pink and perfectly formed, this old-fashioned rose stands on a small bush next to the portico of the Keehn Funeral Home in Brighton, Michigan.

I’ve only seen one stalk of this wildflower growing along the boardwalk at the Brighton millpond. I don’t know what it is. The 18″ leaning stalk peaks out from under other plants so I can’t even see any leaves on the plant. Pale purple trumpets emerge from soft yellow-green buds. That’s all I know. Maybe someone will click on the image to see the large version and be able to identify what I’ve photographed.

I’m feeling guilty about posting another iris but the color is so intense, I can’t help myself. Besides, the iris season is brief. If I don’t shoot them now, I’ll have to wait until next year. This is another beauty from the Brighton Garden Club’s patch beside the Brighton Area Chamber of Commerce. I’m visiting it often now. There are always new things to photograph. You’ll see more in the weeks ahead.

If you’ve ever seen a Rembrandt (1606-1669) painting in a museum, I’m sure you’ve been struck by the deep, rich tones of his layered paint. Few artists captured light as well as he did. Too bad he didn’t have a digital camera. He could have done it in a snap. Both of these images are taken from the same frame shot at the top of the Brighton millpond’s dam. The heavy rains of last week have made the waterfall wider so light plays in interesting ways as the flash of my camera interacts with the ripples. The above shot is from the upper left corner of the one below. Both seem to hint at tortoise shell patterns and colors.

I often encourage you to click on the images so you can see more detail. This time, I’m begging. :-)

There’s too much going on in this image to appreciate it this small. Like most others in the “Color of Water” series, this image is taken from the edge of the dam at the end of the Brighton millpond. Only the season and time of day is different. Here, the algae on the submerged rocks is in full bloom in vibrant green. The oranges are from the nearby street lights (this shot was taken at night) and the lighter colors and splash are illuminated by my camera’s flash. I lightened the image just a bit but the colors weren’t enhanced beyond compensating for the change in the overall value of the dark shot. Refraction of the flash plays wonderful tricks within the swiftly tumbling water.

Bees are lucky. This is what they see when they are coming in for a landing on an iris. Can you imagine being surrounded by color this vivid as you fly from flower to flower? To be honest, they don’t see exactly the way we do and it’s too bad. Experiments have determined bees cannot see reds, but they see parts of the spectrum humans can’t see at all in the UV range. So maybe what they see is even more interesting than what we see. We don’t spend our days pollinating flowers. Why should Nature waste its time attracting US?! See the image much larger.

The flowers seem shy as they hide amid the much larger dark green leaves. The tiny bell-shaped flowers hang downward so only the minute insects can see inside them, but it must be quite a sight if those creatures take the time to look above their heads. In the still night air, their thick fragrance hovered around this well established bed of Lily of the Valley beside the front steps of St. George Lutheran Church, Brighton, MI, as I photographed them. See larger versions by clicking on the images.

You would think no one in their right mind would grow primroses based upon this definition for “Primrose Path”:

A course of action that seems easy and appropriate but can actually end in calamity.

But these are grown next to the Brighton Area Chamber of Commerce in a space carefully tended by the Brighton Garden Club, a fine group that tends public gardens around the city (and bless their hearts for doing it).

A storm flipped half of this lilypad and I was surprised at the difference in color on the underside of it. I’d never given the undersides any thought before, but I now see that some are colored like this while others are the same color as the tops. I have no idea why. There is no larger version of this image. Sorry.

No, they didn’t grow side by side like this. I combined their images into one since I didn’t want to fill this page with large tulip images. Instead, I’ll provide links to each of the individual images so you can see the larger versions, if you’d like. Each will open in a new window. Close it to return to this page.

The pink tulip is my favorite even though it is a day or two past its prime. The fallen petal, the beginning of the whole bloom withering adds character to it. The larger version shows wonderful details.

The wine-colored tulip in the center looks great emerging from the darkness. It has a silvery sheen on it that helps define its form.

Still tightly closed, the red tulip has the gloss and color of garish lipstick. Even the texture of it reminds me of luscious lips. And the neon lime stem is the perfect color to bring that red alive.

And here’s a bonus: This purple double tulip is well past prime, but it still has an interesting shape and beauty even though it’s not of great quality.

Okay now. This is getting ridiculous. What right does this flowering tree have to upstage all of the others? It’s being downright rude!

Winter has let sleeping dogs lie for more than six months, but they woke up this past week! The red ones, above, are from a tiny, young tree next to the millpond’s Imagination Station play area. The more vigorous white tree is in the charming courtyard of the St. George Lutheran Church, Brighton, Michigan, on Main Street.

The photo is ordinary, but the detail isn’t. Up close, the coloration on the feathers is intricate and visually musical. How better to stun the hens with your beauty than to flash your wings and waddle around on webbed feet that turn a brighter orange during the mating season? Note the curl in the top tail feathers in the photo on the right. They are a feature on mallards. This drake, however, isn’t a pure bred mallard. He lacks the white ring on his neck. Mallards mate with many similar species.

Imagine yourself as a gnat taking a break from flying on this boulder. You’d view this miniature landscape as a gigantic forest surrounding you. Thousands of moss spores have grown on this boulder which is not more than 24″ across. I’m continually amazed at how hearty and pervasive moss and fungi are. With temperatures just a few degrees above freezing and dim sunlight, mosses are able to flourish. If the world ends with a whimper instead of a bang, but it will surely be covered in moss and fungi before it happens.

Maybe I’m wrong. Crayola tells me this might be TurquoiseGate instead.

We had a week of very warm weather and hoped to find Timberland Swamp’s notable spring wildflowers in bloom on April 3, but our hopes were dashed. There was much to see anyway in this 245 acre sanctuary owned by the Michigan Nature Association. Near the parking area, this almost flourescent gate protects part of the property and is incongruous with the otherwise natural setting. It caught my eye.

The nonprofit association was established in 1952 and has created dozens of sanctuaries throughout our state. Support them with your time or donation, if you can.

The Internet is frustrating in that it’s a very low resolution medium. When the above picture came out of my camera, it was 8,900,000 pixels. The larger version of it is 1,300,000 pixels. The version on this page is 290,000 pixels. In other words, there is 30 times more detail in the original than what you can see here. In addition, jpeg compression trashes more detail and adds artifacts doing more damage. Still, I think this image of reflections on a pond has a nice quality; a pointillist style.

The original reminds me of paintings by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), an Austrian Symbolist. Below is a detail of the reflections at their original size. Note how there are ripples of plain, flat gray from the dark clouds covering half the sky juxaposed with others brimming with details of the setting sun and branches from shoreline trees. Compare this with Klimt’s “Friedericke Maria Beer-Monti” and “The Kiss.”

I know it’s strange, but I could look at leaf litter for hours. Fresh leaves often glow with autumn colors but even in spring after the leaves have been compressed by heavy snow and remained moist for months, they have interesting muted colors, patterns and textures. These have a tar-like sheen and a burgundy tint to them. Sprinkled on top are clustered pink catkins and bright red coverings of burst spring leaf buds. Next fall, the fresh leaves will join those of past years on the forest floor.

The storm clouds seemed to enhance the golden tones of the dried vegetation on the recreated Tall Grass Prairie at Indian Springs Metropark on the day I visited. The prairie is still young. They tilled the soil and did plantings just a year or so ago. I hope to return to the park to see it in mid-summer.

Some oaks, I don’t know their names, don’t drop all of their leaves in autumn. The dead leaves spend their winters aloft and even storms don’t shake them loose. When spring arrives, those steadfast leaves drop to the ground in a couple of days. A tangle of twigs on the surface of the millpond has caught may of them in this mid-March photo. The flash of my camera brings out their gold color and the dark water enhances their lobed shapes. Note the smattering of bright green specks surrounding them. They are more evident in the larger version. Those specks are tiny plants and you can see some are clusters of four leaves. That’s duckweed in its first bloom, early this year.

Within a matter of days, all of the ice on the millpond has vanished due to temperatures in the 60s. It’s the quickest end of winter I can remember. We didn’t have the usual month of rain, mud, grimy mounds of snow and gray skies. The rapid melt has increased the water going over “Brighton Falls” at the end of the millpond. I posted another photo titled The Color of Water in November, 2009. It was a colorful mid-summer evening shot. This image was taken well after dark on March 16th and has more subtle colors. Algae is already in full bloom from the warmer days and bright sun. That’s the green in this picture. The orange patches are reflections from nearby street lights. The larger version shows much better detail.

Doesn’t this look like a tropical plant from some distant island? It isn’t. It’s a common 2″ zinnia blossom seen from the side photographed in a Livingston County garden. Sometimes we miss incredibly interesting visual things because they are so common we think we know them. We merely glance in their direction instead of looking closely. See the larger version, if you need a winter dose of color.

The ice has separated from the edge of the pond and floated upward. The pond now contains an iceberg! The ice is about 10″ thick and its edge is thinner so it’s actually suspended above the waterline. Consequently, the bottom of it catches light. The above image is done at night with my flash. The one below is done with natural light at dusk so it has a tinge of pink along with the blue-gray sky.

The ice is about a foot from shore so I kicked it with my boot to clean off the surface crud. In so doing, I discovered the ice is now a multitude of vertical fractures probably caused by its expansion and contraction throughout the winter. You can see shards floating in the water, all of them similar in shape and size. In the lower image, note the top surface. you can see how the vertical fractures have shattered the ice sheet’s integrity. I wonder why it still holds together. Click either one to see its larger image.

Hey, I’m not a professional photographer. On most days, I’m not even a very good one. This isn’t a great shot, and I’ve turned it 90 degrees to fit the blog’s format. Yet I like its interesting visual balance and composition. The composition breaks one of the cardinal rules: it’s essentially cut in half. I like breaking rules.

Several things within it create visual balance: the rusted barrel top takes up the entire right half. Its warm tones balance the cool ones that fill the left half. The dominant (and warm) curve that slices the halves is balanced by the straight diagonal (and cool) shadow line. Even though the barrel top fills half the image, it’s balanced by the almost-full circle of the other lid lying on the asphalt. Note everything in this image is roughly textured. That unifies the disparate elements. Another rule this composition breaks is that the eye is drawn to the crumpled light blue paper even though it’s awkwardly positioned and cropped along the bottom edge. While I wouldn’t frame this image, I think it has some merit mixed in with its flaws.

I like to go behind buildings to see the junk they leave unattended, big objects that don’t fit in their dumpsters. These things collect until the load is large enough to haul away. Here, a steel box has become a pedestal for a gasoline pump nozzle in the afternoon sun. The dull sheen of the aluminum sharply contrasts with the rusting scars of the painted surface, and a rust feast is in progress on the never-painted rectangle in the upper left. A few years ago, the aluminum nozzle would buy a hamburger if it was taken to a metal recycler. Not in this economy.

God, isn’t rust beautiful? :-)

It’s easy to find in Michigan these days. Just look at all of those colors, the flaking of paint layers and the colorful pitting in the larger version. Come back tomorrow for more decaying man-made things. One is in the batter’s box.

In another attempt to assuage Winter, here’s a dose of color for you which veers from the usual images at Words4It. In 2006, a poinsettia I had in my office for several years developed particularly colorful leaves. I suspect it was because I didn’t give it proper nutrition. As leaves fell off, I scanned them for no good reason except to record their patterns. This image is a composite of those scans. The larger version (2400 x 1292, 393k) is quite spectacular in detail. You are welcome to crop it down to fit your desktop.