A macro morning turns into a landscape morning

Isn’t it funny how some days you set out to do one thing, and end up doing quite the opposite?

Like this Sunday, for example. Off I went, quite determined to have myself a macro fest in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens. With my camera loaded with recharged battery and formatted memory card, my camera bag bearing my Canon 100 mm Macro lens and extension tubes and hefting my heavy Manfrotto tripod, off I set on a somewhat overcast day to do the macro thing.

When I arrived there, the wind was blustery and not conducive to high dof images of elegant blooms dancing on long stems. Not to be discouraged, I headed to the safe but predictable cluster of aloes where I knew I would be sure to find some bees burrowing about in the pollen.

But, blah. I’ve done that before.

And so I removed the macro lens, twisted on the 24-85 mm and turned my eye to the landscape instead. The light, variable as it was, rewarded patience with popping ultra-3-d images. The mountain played hide and seek with the clouds, and the aloes held gasp-fulls of sunlight.

As always, I was first drawn to the park bench:

Then I moved towards the beckoning aloes at the bend, moved beyond them and up the steps, following the cobbled path until I had a clear view of the mountain:

Once there, I caught sight of a cluster of purple flowers against a dark rock, and followed the path higher up the slope, still determined to fit some macro into the morning. But once I turned around to sit down on the sun-warmed stone steps, the clouds were pushed apart again, and the foliage tickled with vivid light, seducing me to remove the macro lens once again:

The macro morning had turned into a landscape morning. But it was still a photographic morning, which is better than pretty much any other kind of morning.

~ by dhewitson on May 27, 2009.