GREEN-GOLD AFTERNOON

Buckeye butterfly on goldenrod. 

What a day! The temperature outside is a balmy 75˚F.  Bright afternoon sun is gleaming through the lush canopy leaves of the sycamore, hackberry, and box elder trees along the river, turning them an autumnish golden-green. Slowly but surely the new season claims the land, each day bringing a bit more color.

Yesterday, friend and fellow-father-in-law, Rich, and I spent several hours ambling around various prairies and old fields, looking for fall color scenes to photograph. It's still a bit early hereabouts, but the goldenrods and asters were lovely. Given the number of cold nights we've had recently, we were surprised at the number of insects—especially butterflies—we found still active—though as of yesterday morning, I still had a hummingbird at my dooryard feeder. 

I've spent today mostly inside, working at the desk, looking out the window and wishing I could be casting for smallmouth bass in the sparkling pools, or driving some rural backroad in search of that perfect red maple for a photo. A couple of hours from now I'll have to head into the city to attend the monthly board-of-directors meeting of the area's community health centers.

Alas, there's always something needing doing; a necessary bit of work, a task best not put off any longer, a meeting to attend—something which takes time and energy and is important, which nevertheless also gobbles up another small piece of your finite allotment of life. That isn't a complaint, merely an observation—a sort of self-reminder to pick and choose wisely when agreeing to such matters.

I well know I'm luckier than most in the amount of free time I have to spend any way I want. Honest, I don't take such a blessing lightly. But I also must admit that it's never enough…especially not in October, when the days are mild, the river gleams, country byways beckon, and sunlight shines golden-green through riverside leaves.

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NATURE'S STAINED GLASS

To a lot of photographers, harsh, straight-on backlight can be a bane to making a picture, or at least an unwelcome difficulty to be worked around—either necessitating a move to change the angle of the shot, or by adding fill flash. A shutterbug's gotta do what a shutterbug's gotta do, I suppose.

When it comes to nature photography, my personal shooting philosophy is to keep things as natural and spontaneous as possible. I'll move around to work a scene or subject, but I'm also prone to try and make my first shots from the original angle, thinking there must have been something worthwhile there which caught my eye in the first place. Artificial light is employed only as a last resort.

Mind you, I'm not saying my way is the only way, or even the best way. Nor that you shouldn't adjust your shooting position, or even pop a flash now and then. Just that I try to minimize being a stage manager or lighting director. I prefer to embrace the conditions at hand and try to find a way to work with what I'm given, recording rather than creating. The creative part, for me, is finding the shot and getting an image that captures the essence of its attraction. Backlight becomes a tool rather than an obstacle…and sometimes the primary impetus for the shot.

The butterfly shot, above, is a good example. As butterfly images go, it isn't much good. You'd never use it to show someone what a common Buckeye Butterfly, Junonia coenia, looked like; it isn't even a "pretty" or "artsy" butterfly image. Nope, what caught my eye, and prompted the photo, was that dastardly backlight itself—strong morning sunshine streaming straight at the butterfly…and through its wings!

I saw this not as "Butterfly the Insect," but  "Butterfly as Stained-Glass." Nature's stained glass. 

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