Raphanus sativus. This stuff is common in coastal California. It has several flower colors on different plants, mostly lilac and yellowish and makes a pretty display along rural pasture fences where it isn’t mowed, but up close it’s an ungainly scraggly shrubby thing about 2 ft tall. The flowers are always a mix of very small attractive new ones and dead ones that are often sort of wabi-sabi. While I was waiting for some action from the Peregrines the other day, I shot a cluster of blooms growing in the poison oak, using the “macro” lens I had at hand.
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Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Canon R5, 100-500 + 2X, at 648mm, f/11, ISO 6400, 1/2000th. Hand held with no time taken for a more careful angle. (I was hoping for a Peregrine fly-by and didn’t want to change settings or get too distracted.) Basic LR adjustments – very few needed on this foggy morning. Into PS for NR and BG blur of some intruding elements. Shot in landscape format with slight crop from left/
Nice color palette and soft background. The flow of the stem to the flowers is almost three dimensional ending with the explosion of color. Excellent in every way.
I love this - sometimes the long lens comes in handy for macros! It achieves a dreamy quality as you have done here. The blurred surrounds are great. And very interesting how the flower starts out so dark, paling as it ages - which your cluster demonstrates so well.
I love when things like this come to my notice when I’m photographing something else. It’s a beautiful image and well seen and isolated against what sounds like a big messy environment. The shades of pink are so varied and oh that background - you’ve made them float above everything in their own world, which I suppose if you’re a bee, they do.
In addition to the lovely range of colors, I love to see the “veins” on all of the petals. The veins in all stages of the flower’s life contrast with the soft background. Nice!
Really well seen Diane and well photographed. Lovely colors and I like the triangular pattern of the flower cluster and how they are all facing left to right. You are getting maximum use of your equipment.
I’ve never pulled or dug one up and this article and a couple of others don’t mention a radish-like bulb. But young leaves, new seed pods and the flowers are edible and radish-y. I should try for some pictures of them growing along rural fences, but the season for attractive growing things is about over now with the advent of summer heat and drought.
Diane, Lovely image, almost dreamy with the flower edges almost merging into same colored oof background. Good presence of mind to use the telephoto lens to make a macro image.
Thanks @Bill_Fach and @Kris_Smith for the EP – much appreciated! I assume the moderators submit the images to “The Editor”? I can’t find anyone designated as an Editor so I’m not sure who else to thank.
Diane - it’s well deserved. Both Bill and I are Editors as well as Moderators, but the handle doesn’t say both. We usually discuss our picks and considerations beforehand then one of us applies the tag. Competition is heating up though and sometimes I wish we could have a runner up, too.
I’m late getting into this conversation. What a beautiful image. I particularly like @Mike_Friel’s description of “dreamy”. The majority of the frame is lovely, smooth shades, then up the stem and boom! an epic crown of a simple bloom. And you mixed all that beauty with the death of an earlier flower. Joy and sadness.
