I had mentioned my search for skunk cabbage in
bloom to a man who surveys the local butterfly populations (and therefore knows
the nooks and crannies of the county very well) who sent me off to some wet woods I had not visited for
years. I missed finding any flowers until, just before leaving the place, I used
my binoculars to take a second, closer look at a spot right where I had entered
the property. I did find the skunk cabbage but it wasn’t as nice as the first
batch I had found.
But I was glad I had taken the time to stop
because I had forgotten how pretty a particular little stretch of the acreage
was. I had the “wrong” lens for shooting landscapes (and was too lazy to go all
the way back to the truck) but I managed a handful of shots that didn’t turn
out too badly. (Hooray for really good equipment, even if the lens is primarily
for macro photography.)
One reason I tend to shoot wide: I knew there
was something to be found in taking few shots of the iced-in leaves without the sweet gum ball, but what the camera grabbed
was not quite what I had in mind. Hefty cropping and exposure adjustment and
BAM! That’s more like it.
The light was lovely, too... (That lichen should be attached to a twig of a tree by the little pale dot lower right; the twig that looks to be extending from it is not part of the lichen. There is a lot of such lichen on the ground after this winter.)
