Wildflowers at Rocky Bluff Trail in Crab Orchard NWR


This past winter, I was able to upgrade from the Olympus TG-5 to the TG-6, which offered a few more options for macro photography.  I was excited to get the camera out into the local woods when the wildflowers were coming up to test its capabilities after seeing what it could do with this tiny flower in our yard.  It's the little one that I'm pointing to on the purple deadnettle plant.



The opportunity presented itself when Laura, Lucy and I were going to meet up with Katherine, Kyle and Joseph at Rocky Bluff Trail near Devil's Kitchen Lake.  I knew that I would be dead weight, so I warned them to carry on without me.  I couldn't believe it, but they finished the loop and were back to the start before I had moved 50 yards.  I was so in the zone just trying to get the shots right.  I was atop the hill and the wind up there wasn't helping me work any faster; when you are that close to the plants, every little motion is amplified, causing blur.  



















Eventually, I went down to meet them at the main waterfall and I couldn't believe that I had spent so much time atop the hill.  The bottom was lush!  So many flowers!  Luckily, Laura wasn't ready to head home yet, so we bid our friends farewell (from a distance, of course) and then went back to a patch of flowers that Laura had seen near the creek.  She fed Lucy at the creek's edge while I took photos.  A few people were curious about what was so interesting that I would get on my hands and knees with the tripod to photograph.  I had also improvised a wind-blocker using my diffuser and its reflective cover.  At one point, a six-spotted tiger beetle crawled up the diffuser panel, distracting me from the flowers.















We worked our way back toward the parking lot, photographing more flowers along the way.  Laura fed Lucy again by the main waterfall as they waited for me to finish.  That girl has it made!













My next wildflower trip was to Gum Springs.  You can view that here...

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