Macro photography is fun, especially bugs and plants. I’m usually too lazy to go out early in the morning when the dew and cool air keeps bugs still enough to make them easier to photograph. Flowers and plants are always there in my neighborhood, and easy to make look pretty with a macro lens. But I especially like to find ways to make plants look strange; or rather, to reveal that they have been strange all along, even a big unnerving in the colors, shapes and textures. There’s an insistent sensuality, an earthy will to live and displace what gets in the way, whether soil, plants, or concrete. A will to live, not unlike animals and insects.
So here are a few shots from this week that suggest something of that fecund inner life.
The purple Iris that is the cover shot is gorgeous, but a big menacing from this point of view, at least in my eyes, like a strange creature from the sea or outer space, or something out of Little Shop of Horrors.
The pictures in the gallery have their own character. Another purple Iris, this one looking like a mouth. The hairy pink flower that almost looks like it’s under water. The maze of thistles in another plant look like a trap from close up, but soft and pretty and kind of boring from a distance. I liked the tulip for its insistent beauty as its flower dies and dries out.
No Ordinary Light 