by Jim Zablotny
A few years ago, a freind gave me some cup plants for starting my prairie. The second year the plants never came up and I thought that they perished. The following year they produced a clump with a 4 foot diameter and 12 foot tall flower spikes. This is a close-up of a freshly opened flower which shows the pollen laden anthers. Many bees including my honeybees forage on the nectar and pollen. I wanted to crop a little more off the bottom and right side, but decided to keep the up curled foreground petals intact. K5 IIs 180mm f3.5 (1/200sec at f14, ISO 500) Slight crop, Dfine 2, Levels...............................Jim
Comments
6 commentsFine comp, exposure, and bg, Jim. I like the comp just as is. I am not familiar with "cup plant." 12 feet tall? Cool.
I like the comp., detail and the colors in the image. Nicely done.
Jim - I have seen very similar flowers and thought they were from Sunflower Family - they probably are. Never heard of this name "cup plant" before.
Love the slanted composition and details.
I'm glad you kept the crop as is. It works very well. The curled petals add to the overall effect. This is a lovely shot with good lighting and color palet. Very good choices for point of view, point of focus and defpth of field. The shot is sharp where it should be and has good softness as well. Very nice image!
This worked out really well for you, Jim. Good composition, good color, good detail and an interesting subject!
Jim, I thought I'd commented on this, but obviously that was all in my head... This is a fine look at this classic prairie species. The yellow/green combination of colors works very well and I like the curled tips in the foreground and how they "invite" me to look deeper into the flower. The sharpness of the center parts is great.
As an aside, viewing a 1600px vertical requires scrolling the image, which takes away from the viewing. It seems that 1200 pix just fits vertically on my monitor...don't know about others.