It’s January and my hydrangeas are in bloom.  The weather is just so confused this year!  I brought two hydrangea blooms inside with the intention of photographing them with my macro setup.  I thought I’d get an afternoon of fun out of the pretty blue bloom, but I found myself more intrigued with the spent bloom from last summer.  Its fragility and lacelike quality were appealing, especially after I put it on a lightbox.

After my last macro adventure, I was excited to try again with water droplet refraction photography and my monarch butterfly photo.  It’s fun to see flowers refracted in droplets, so why not a butterfly on a flower?  I went in closer this time with a single droplet on the end of a blade of grass.  (Again, I did not ask permission for borrowing a blade of cat grass.  Don’t tell Goldy!)  Glycerin helped to make the droplet a little bigger.  It’s still not exactly what I was envisioning, but it’s progress…

My African Irises are already blooming this year, too.  I planted a few in my backyard after enjoying photographing in previous springs.  (We can’t walk through a patch of irises at Fowler Groves without me saying “Freeze me!” and Rich laughing his head off.)  So it’s great to get into a macro mood, walk outside to gather a few subjects, and enjoy them inside.  First I squirted the bloom with droplets…

…and then I increased the magnification and narrowed the focus to just the droplets on top of the yellow parts of the flower.  It was a surreal feeling of discovering a magic little world amongst the droplets.

Next I tried a high-key image of some tiny white flowers from our viburnum bushes.  The blooms never seem very spectacular on the bushes, but I’ve seen hummingbirds sip nectar from them, so I was curious to get a closer view.  To add depth and interest to the image, I spritzed water on a piece of glass, then put the glass on my bright purple laptop sleeve.  Pretty!

My last image of the day was my favorite.  I spritzed water on the tip of some grass seeds, then positioned them in water with a chrysanthemum behind.  Rich said this one reminds him of stalagmites in a cave.  I liked the technique, but I didn’t get it bead enough to refract enough.  I will definitely try this one again! :)