A LITTLE DEW

Frost aster, so named because it is one of the last plants to remain in flower—even surviving through multiple light frosts. Because of this tenacity, it's an important source of pre-winter food for various insects, including wasps and bees.   

On the face of it, dew is nothing more than water droplets formed by atmospheric moisture condensing on various surfaces as they lose heat. Dew occurs when moisture forms at a rate faster than it can evaporate. Should the temperature fall below a certain point, the dew becomes frost.

A few minutes after my arrival, the morning's dew had all but disappeared from this clump of big bluestem—though you can see a few droplets on the seeds and stems, one nicely sunlit.

Autumn is the year's best time for dew formation. In turn, it's one of my favorite times for making photos, because a bit of dew on the even the most mundane, commonplace object—such as grass stems or strands of a spider's web—is at once dressed with a sparkling touch of jeweled magic.

Tiny dew droplets strung like transparent pearls along the fine strands of a diminutive web. 

A morning walk through an old field, along the edge of a wood or stream, will afford a thousand possible images to record. Of course, given the ephemeral nature of dew, your photographic time is fleeting and seldom endures long enough for you to barely scratch the surface of available possibilities.

Sunlight shining through dew-cloaked Indian grass almost looks like frost. 

That was the case this morning…I only had about fifteen minutes in which to snap away like mad before the rising sun raised the dew point, and the tiny droplets which had enacted their transformation on the everyday, suddenly evaporated into thin air.  

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