Tag Archives: nature photo

Photo of the Week – January 30, 2014

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Of the many categories of art in the world, the still life is not one of my favorites.  I appreciate the skill needed to create a nice still life photo or painting, but I don’t often find them very compelling.  Because of that, I think it’s ironic that I stopped to photograph this frozen plant mainly because when I saw it, my first thought was, “Hey, that looks like a still life!”

Arrowhead plant (Sagittaria sp.) encased in ice a the Helzer family prairie near Stockham, Nebraska.

Arrowhead plant (Sagittaria calycina?) encased in ice a the Helzer family prairie near Stockham, Nebraska.

I suppose it would technically be considered more of a portrait than a still life?  What do I know?  I’m not an artist, I’m just an ecologist with a camera!

I was pretty sure this plant was an arrowhead (Sagittaria sp) but I took it to my botanist down the hall, Gerry Steinauer, for confirmation.    Gerry first gave me a hard time for not bringing him the actual specimen (?!) but eventually agreed with me that it was an arrowhead and even identified it to the species – Sagittaria calycina.  I’m sure the botanists out there reading this will look closely to see if they agree with him or not.  Let me know what you think!

(By the way, if you don’t have your own “botanist down the hall”, I highly recommend them – though mine likes to wander into my assistant’s office and eat all the snacks from her desk.)

Photo of the Week – December 5, 2013

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Continuing the theme from earlier this week, here is another photo of a sunflower seed head.  This one was taken on a frosty morning last week.

A sunflower seed head

A Maximilian sunflower seed head.  Deep Well Wildlife Management Area, Nebraska.

I usually try to avoid putting a horizon line behind the subject of a close-up photo because it can add unnecessary distraction to the image.  In this case, however, I tried the photo both ways and decided I liked the one with the horizon better because it gave the image some additional context and depth.

Here’s the alternate version – see what you think.

The same sunflower head shown above from a slightly different angle to keep the horizon line out of the image.

The same sunflower head shown above, but from a slightly different angle to keep the horizon line out of the image.