After wandering around the beaches of Fort Bragg after the Super Blood Blue Moon, I headed over to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens next. I had some extension tubes with me that I had never tried out, so i wanted to take the opportunity to work on some Macro Photography.
To be honest, I wasn't sure if there would be a lot of flowers blooming, but the gardens are huge - so I was hopeful. Also honestly, I didn't even cover like a quarter of the gardens. Did I mention they are huge?
See that little square in the upper right corner of the map? That's basically all I saw. I mean, I had been up all night and done quite a bit of walking by this point. Plus had to drive 4-5 hours or so to get home depending on traffic. So I couldn't spend all day at the gardens without being in danger of driving while sleepy.
But, despite it being the end of January, I was delighted to see that there were many flowers in bloom and a ton of other cool stuff to see (and of course photograph)! So, I'll be splitting this into a series because otherwise, frankly, all of the color and patterns are a little overwhelming to the eye.
So, welcome to the world of Macro Photography (or, welcome back if you already are familiar with this genre)!
Macro Photography is not limited to just flowers/plants, although that is mostly what I focused on this particular day. But there are also some fun sculptures in the gardens and I love art too, so I couldn't resist.
I think the beautiful thing about Macro Photography is that in bringing things so close, the focus is more on patterns and light. Mood and emotion. Instead of the scene as a whole. It's a little bit abstract and I love to feel that I might be creating something in a macro shot that other people may not have noticed or a perspective they may not have thought about.
This next one reminds me of a spider or an octopus.
In case you couldn't tell, stamen are one of my favorite targets. But berries and other things are just as interesting in Macros.
Macros can even give a new perspective to a branch with peeling bark .
Another awesome thing is that pictures get a lot of "natural bokeh" which is not bokeh caused by the camera, but rather by the magnification of things in the background such as petals, water, light through leaves, etc., some of which you can see in the pictures above and below.
The birth of a flower.
Most people know I love to birdwatch too. So of course I was carrying my "big" 300 zoom lens just in case I happened upon some birds. And I did! I quickly switched out lenses when I heard the distinctive knocking of a woodpecker in the trees above my head.
And I was so happy because there was not just one, but three clown-faced Acorn Woodpeckers!
This is a good time to end the story for now. Stayed tuned for more macro magic in the next post!
xoxo
