With this weekend marking the unofficial start to summer, I wanted to share one more spring image in my series (see photos 1 and 2) before moving on to a few other scenes and then Japan (!).
One of the things I love about the guys I photograph with on a regular basis is that they’re smart. It never fails that when we all go shooting together, I learn something. It may be about life, it may be about photography, it may be about celestial mechanics, I just really never know… but I do know I’ll learn something. On this particular occasion I was introduced to the Catesby’s Trillium (Trillium catesbaei), which I actually walked right past without even noticing!
In the spring I find myself photographing Trillium on a pretty regular basis (if you’ve been following along with my blog for a while, you’ve seen a good number of images… three so far this year!), particularly white and yellow ones. The plants have a symmetry to them that I really like, and they’re generally easy to find. As I’ve learned over the years, however, there are a TON of different varieties of Trillium, beyond my normal go-tos. My friends Paul and Pat are pretty darn good at spotting the different ones, which is great, because I don’t know what they are (I just know I like them!). What made the Catesby’s Trillium interesting to me, was that the bloom actually hangs down underneath the leaves, making it hard to spot… and equally hard to photograph. Each of us took a go at it, which involved wrangling our tripods and then eventually just putting our cameras on the ground to get a good viewing angle. For this particular shot, I had Pat hold up a black rain jacket behind the flower to both block out the sun, and isolate the flower from it’s surroundings. I’m pretty happy with the way it worked out!
Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!
–Dan Thompson
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