Flowers are easy

This is going to ramble a little bit becasuse I'm starting to get cabin fever, as I'm sure most people are who are taking "Shelter in Place" seriously. During the past couple of weeks, I haven't been able to do my normal routine as my favorite hiking trail has been closed down for the duration of this problem, so I've resorted to walking along the streets in my neighborhood. The last couple of days I started taking photos of flowers that I saw since Spring has definitely sprung in our neck of the woods. There's a lot of pollen in the air and I'm definitely congested due to seasonal allergies.

But I digress. Most of the shots I've been taking recently have been with my iPhone. It has a good lens, but it's not nearly as good as my Canon 80D lenses, so today, I dusted off the Canon and took it out on my afternoon walk. It's the first time I've really used the camera since my trip to Idaho last summer. First thing I had to do was charge up the camera's battery, as it was deader than a doornail.

Now, several years ago I got myself involved in a 365 project. Challenge yourself to go out every day and take at least one photo per day and publish it online so others can see it and possibly critique it. I ended up starting on January 1st of that year and for the next two years, I diligently went about documenting every day of the year by taking photos. Some days were better than others, but I felt that it made me a better photographer and the one thing I learned was that flowers are easy. In other words, it's hard to screw up a flower photo. In fact, during my 365 project, someone challenged me again to not take a single photo of flowers for the entire month of March. Do you know how hard that is? Sometimes, you don't have the energy to go out and take photos and it's easy just to step outside, especially in March and take a quick photo of a flower and call it good for the day.

I did end up completing that particular challenge, but it was difficult. With that in the back of my mind, I decided that today, I wanted to concentrate on things other than flowers. I'd actually noticed that Painted Lady butterflies were starting their migration north from Mexico and were starting to show up in the neighborhood, so that was a great subject. Last year, Southern California had a huge migration of Painted Ladies due to the unusually wet winter we'd had and they proceeded northward in droves. I'm not sure how large this year's will be but last year, it was estimated that over a billion butterflies of that species alone migrated northward. That's a buttload of butterflies.

Because it is Spring, there are a lot of insects besides butterflies out and about. It's like a bountiful smorgasbord out there for insects. Which flower do I want to pollenate today? Today on my walk, I saw bumblebees, butterflies, honeybees, dragonflies, and lizards.

Another reason for getting my Canon out, was I really wanted to explore things that were a little bit farther away from the path and it's hard to capture those things with an iPhone camera. So I concentrated less on flowers, but on other things, and so you get photos like a lone pine cone that's probably dropped all of its seeds but is still hanging on a branch surrounded by pine cone flowers awaiting pollination so they will eventually create new pine cones.

The lizard photo. I ended up stalking this little guy, probably no longer than 3 inches or so. I think he was actually kind of pissed, because I'd seen a painted lady flit by and land on the rock right were he was, then it darted off and I did see the lizard had lunged at the butterfly. So I guess this guy was pouting because he missed his mid afternoon snack. But it worked for me, because I got a nice portrait of a lizard.

Needless to say, I won't stop taking photos of flowers, but as I noted above, flowers are easy and if you concentrate only on the flowers, you're going to miss a lot of subtle beauty all around you. So I'm going to be walking around over the next couple of weeks, practicing my social distancing, but at the same time, exploring my world through my camera lens once again. I'm looking forward to it and I hope you will enjoy it with me. It's where I can wander at the moment.