Pinwheel

More tiny things in my yard. Bloodroot trying to come up in some rocks in my garden. Two others next to it emerged normally, but this one had its leaf twisted out of shape by a couple of rocks. I freed it and got down with the macro because the shape of the leaf was so interesting. If you know how bloodroot normally comes up, you’ll know what I mean. Otherwise I can post another picture to illustrate.

Anyway…it’s still not safe to take the snow tires off yet, but I’m celebrating spring anyway!

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It’s another stack. 6 pictures. This time I went to town with retouching in Zerene. How did it work? I also did some clone stamping in Ps. Crazy, but weirdly fun.

Technical Details

Is this a composite: Yes
Lumix G9
Leica 45mm f/2.8 lens
f/8 | 1/15 sec | ISO 200
Tripod - manually selected focus areas on the back screen just as an experiment

Lr processed to up exposure and contrast, clarity & texture, very slight sharpening & nr. Zerene to stack and retouch the final DMap image which was MUCH better than the PMax. Ps to clone away some halos and add some Smart Sharpen. Not cropped.

@the.wire.smith

Wow, Kris, this is quite the shot. I’m not familiar with the bloodroot, but it sure is an interesting looking plant. I’m always amazed at how plants can come up through rocks and even a crack in cement. They are determined to come forth. Nature is so wonderful, and I always enjoy getting out in it. Nice shot. Glad you are finding some signs of spring in your yard.

Thanks Shirley. Bloodroot is one of my favorite spring flowers. It comes up almost through snow. Back when I lived in NH it was relatively rare in my area and I remember asking a photographer I’d met and shot with where he found some (he posted a recent photo somewhere) and he refused to tell me. It bugged me a lot and I got revenge, but then I found some five minutes from my house. A huge sea of them. It was funny. Now I live in WI I have them in the yard. Hilarious.

Here’s what they look through their blossoming stage - one stem for the flower and one for the leaf which is wrapped around the flower stem. The leaves persist through summer.

The middle shot is from my yard the other day. The top & bottom ones are from the cache I found after being refused by the other guy.

They bloom like this for a few days then the petals drop pretty much all at once. Some are so delicate a breeze will dislodge them. Tiny bees love the pollen/nectar and I believe they grow from spreading rhizomes and also through seed dispersal.

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Oh wow! Thanks for sharing all the different stages. Pretty neat.

What an interesting plant - I’ve never seen one. Thanks for sharing its various stages.

The colors are lovely, but since the star is the plant, it feels to me like the strong orange pebbles are competing, color-wise, and the OOF orange pointy one is especially distracting. Perhaps desaturating the oranges of the rocks would give the plant even more prominence. I gave it a try, also vignetting around the plant by bringing down the highlights and cooling the background a bit. I also cloned out that small twig in the LLC and the bits at the base of the prominent roundish orange pebble. Did you consider using a polarizer to knock down the shininess of the wet pebbles?

The details of the plant are really great, especially all the water droplets. And I love the patterns the veins make.

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You know…I put it in my bag, but forgot to put it on the lens. Doh! If I go out again later I’ll slap it on. It looks like I should have.

I think bringing down some of the orange tones might be helpful. Another thing I hadn’t considered so I’ll have a look at that, too. Thanks for the time you took with it.

Here is the same plant as of a couple hours ago. We had a bit of snow overnight as you can see. This is a 20-image stack using 0/+, 4-step intervals. PMax. A little bit of haloing and some areas where there isn’t a bit in focus, but it was better overall than the DMap version. All part of the experimenting.

I had the polarizer on (thanks Bonnie!) and desaturated the rocks just a little using a radial filter.