Yesterday morning I headed to Brickyard Conservation Area here in Amherst. When I go there it is pretty much all about macro so just toss my 5D Mark IV in the bag with the 180 and doubler mounted. As a result I forgot the 180’s lens hood.I tried shielding the front of the lens with my hand’s shadow but this is pretty much directly into the sun.
At first I thought that this should end up in the pixel bin but decided to embrace the light and now kind of like it. Lots of sunlight bouncing around in there. The basic subject works quite well but the rest will be up to your taste.
I made a few other compositions but could not reposition myself to get less sun while trying to stay perpendicular to the leaf.
Stephen Gingold Nature Photography Blog 
I opened the pic in a new tab to see full-size, very bright and fun! 🙂
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Thanks, Liz. Glad you found it to be fun to view. 🙂
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You caught some great dewdrops there.
I might have been tempted to crop off the lower half of the picture and soften the much subtler polygons in the upper half.
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I had considered cropping the lower half but decided that the polygon was worth keeping and so far most reviews have been positive. Obviously it was the sparkly dew drops I was after and that was the case with several other compositions that morning but this was the standout. We’ll see when I process the others whether any one of them merits sharing.
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You may recall that at times when polygons have been unavoidable, I’ve played them up, as you did with the prominent one in your picture. An example is:
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I remember that one.
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Despite the most obvious polygon floating around — like a floater in a human eye — it’s a beautiful image. I like the tiny starbursts as much as the primary one.
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Funny that you should mention floaters. I just developed a new one which causes me some false starts in the field when it makes me think a bird or bug has just flown by in my peripheral vision. The current one resembles that irritating paperclip guy Microsoft Word used to have for help.
I closed down to f/22 for the starbursts but really didn’t expect much from the 180+2x combination. I knew the large one was there but the smaller ones were a bonus. There are a lot of polygons in the image, most faded and some only partial. At first I thought they were all just too much but time has made them all more enjoyable.
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Beautiful image Steve! Love the starbursts!
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Thanks, Reed. The 180 is not known for starbursts but I was surprised and pleased to capture them.
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Lovely photos
Thanks
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Thank you!
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Sometimes we need to forget part of our equipment to create a great image, Steve. This picture is a beauty.
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Yes, the idea is to create and not think about the nuts and bolts too much. Thanks, Peter.
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I love the sunburst effects off the droplets and the pixellated octagon has an interesting effect. Reminds me of how Amish women put a small ‘flaw’ in their quilts to remind us that only the Divine is perfect. 🙂
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Wayback machine time…During my college years The Moody Blues put out an album with a Tantric mandala on the back. I was quite taken by the design and in reading up about the Tantric religion learned that monks would leave some flaws in their painstaking work creating the mandalas so as to not offend the Gods who were the only sources of perfection, similar to the Amish quilters. I’d like to think that’s why there are sometimes flaws in my photographs. 😀
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An arresting image and kind of quirky!
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Thanks, Carol. I tend most often to be as realistic as possible with my imagery so creating something like this was a lot of fun.
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I’m in the camp who really like this. Sometimes it’s worth trying something different or even something you’d typically avoid, even if only because you forgot the lens hood. It makes for an interesting composition. And I’m also fascinated how you can see some of the technical elements of the lens in the shapes it creates. Granted, I most appreciate it for the artistic element it creates, but I do still find the technical interesting. This past weekend I went out with my macro lens and a doubler, something I rarely do, but decided to for the very reason that I rarely do.
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As they say, “different is good”. 🙂 I tend to fall into a rut sometimes photographing the same subjects the same way so breaking the mold felt good. Thanks, Todd!
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Cool shot, Steve!
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