For some reason the first line of an old John Prine song popped into my head. This is actually a mixture of ice, water, leaves of grass, and part of a cottonwood leaf, all jumbled into a rich stew of nutrients that will feed the new growth in my backyard in the weeks to come. Shooting straight down and very close.

It's a departure from the spare look of my ice shots over the past few days. No elegant, clean lines here. Usually I try for simplification, which maybe I could have found in the leaf itself... but I have lots of close ups of leaves, and thought I'd try something different, organizing the visual elements around complexity instead. I built in a bit of structure by placing objects - the leaf, blades of grass - along the left, bottom, and right sides, leaving the top side open. This was intentional.

Tomorrow I'll be cranking up the wayback machine and revisiting some of my favourite wilderness backpacking adventures from years past. I am grateful to my younger self for being willing to place one foot in front of the other for as long as it took to get into these amazing places. It was a huge part of my life for a quarter century. Ask my knees and back - they'll tell you it's true!

This shot was made in my backyard at the peak of snowmelt in April. Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2023 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   grass leaf water ice snowmelt melting spring macro close up square complexity chaos order? I'll try anything prairie backyard Val Marie Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page 2023

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I'd had an extraordinary morning in Jasper, photographing rutting Elk in a light rain, and finally it was time to find a picnic table, make coffee and have some lunch. In my backpacking years I used to make do with instant coffee and powdered milk, but as a still-active old guy, I expect better. I drink my coffee black now, and it has to be filter drip, organic, fairly traded dark roast, which tastes even better in the great outdoors than it does at home.

But I got distracted. Raindrops covered every fallen leaf, and one close look prompted me to grab the macro lens and tripod and see what I could do. By then the sun was intermittently breaking through the midday cloud cover, and the beaded drops were quickly evaporating - and anyway I liked the soft look better than the sparkling sunshine and shadows... so I spent the next half hour crawling around next to the parking area, drawing funny looks from the few picnickers who had ventured out. People who visit the Rockies can't imagine why I wouldn't be photographing the mountains. What on earth is so interesting about the ground? Well... I'm not there to explain it to them.

Meanwhile, my coffee got cold!

Photographed in Jasper National Park, Alberta (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2021 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   leaf square macro close up yellow wet raindrops beauty Trembling Aspen Populus tremuloides Quaking Aspen ground picnic area ordinary looking down wild forest Rocky Mountains Canadian Rockies Jasper National Park Alberta Canada copyrighted James R. Page naturesquare

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Continuing with early spring pics, this one from two years ago - in fact, exactly two years ago, to the day. Just down the street, on my neighbour's property, along the green strip between the sidewalk and his fence... but I have't identified the tree yet, mainly because I keep forgetting to take a good look at it after the leaves have unfurled. Maybe this year :-)

I used the tripod and macro lens for this shot. Speaking of which, my new tripod arrived the other day - all I needed was the leg assembly as my ball head is fine. I've been using Really Right Stuff ball heads for years; they're expensive but top quality. Far more expensive than the tripod itself, but worth every penny for smooth operation and solid lockdown.

Photographed in Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2021 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   spring buds new growth branch tree wet droplet raindrop square nature wild prairie village Val Marie Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page 2021

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A single Showy Milkweed flower - part of a dense, globular umbel or cluster - is covered with morning dew. I made this shot last summer, in early morning when there was no wind. The sun was already up, and I didn't want shadows and hot spots from the ensuing contrast, so I poked around to find a blooming milkweed plant in the shade.
After that, set up was fairly easy.

I used my standard macro procedure: tripod and cable release, locking up the mirror prior to exposure. In post-processing I made a slight correction to remove the blue cast (adding some yellow and magenta) and warm up the colour a little. The colour here is exactly as I remember it. These individual flowers are very tiny, 1/3 to 1/2 inch in diameter.

For us in the northern hemisphere summer seems a long way off, but I'm sure it will roll around on schedule. Meanwhile, here in southwestern Saskatchewan we are currently basking in temperatures hovering around 0°C and scheduled to soar as high as 10° on Saturday. That would break all existing records. A touch of false spring before we inevitably slide back into the deep freeze.

Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2019 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   Showy Milkweed Asclepias speciosa flower wildflower macro close up morning dew dewdrops wet dew droplets beauty beautiful wild prairie Grasslands National Park Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page

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Close macro view of another Prairie Crocus, photographed in the same area as yesterday's post. The plant is covered in fine hairs that can trap both moisture and heat to help it survive the cold spring nights.

I made this shot from a tripod with the 105mm macro + 1.7x teleconverter, lens stopped down, 3 second shutter delay to allow the mirror to lock up and vibration to fade away. There was minimal breeze that morning, another factor that can make macro work on the prairie difficult. Soft light. And I had to hike down a coulee, far from the road, to find this... so park staff were not going to drive past, see me on the ground, and think I had died in the ditch. (I don't do all my photography from a prone position, but I do spend a lot of time on the ground. Just ask my knees.)

Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2019 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   Prairie Crocus Pasque Flower Anemone patens flower wildflower macro vertical close up water droplets raindrops guard hairs wild prairie first spring flower Grasslands National Park Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page

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