While I admit I was impatient for the Crocus this year, I checked back, at my wife’s suggestion, to see when I took my Crocus shots in past years. The earliest are from April 2nd, and they are mostly from the second week in April! So our crocus are, in fact, way early this year…tempted out by those three record-setting 80 degree March days. Yesterday with the temperatures in the more seasonable 40s, the crocus looked like they might be reconsidering the rush. They remained tightly furled all day. Even the most mature blooms, from the first day of the heat-wave, were only open just enough at the top to see the orange fans at the center. They are not going to have much fun in the next few days either, as we are expecting temperatures in the 30s and 40s with rain.

Still, yesterday’s more subdued afternoon light gave me a chance to try some really close shots, using the digital tel-extender function with macro on the Canon SX40HS. At the 24mm end of the zoom, in macro, the camera can focus on an object touching the outer surface of the lens…so I set the DTE to 1.5x or 2x and pushed in as close as I could, while not getting into my own shadow.

This close in, the orange fan of the feathery stigmas dominates the image. The crocus in our yard are a variety with short stamens and elaborate stigmas. (As an interesting note, discovered in my bit of research into the crocus this am on wiki, the spice saffron comes from the stigmas of one of the autumn flowering crocus. Who knew?) The purple striped petals of our crocus form a interesting backdrop for the real drama of the stigmas.

Canon SX40HS at 24mm and macro, with 2x digital tel-extender for the equivalent field of view of 48mm lens on a full frame DSLR. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.

Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Special attention was required to balance the exposure to bring out all the color and detail of the stigmas.

And for the Sunday thought. I love macros. I love to look really closely at the details of the common things around us. Moss. Lichen. The stigmas of flowers. The little lacy network of veins in a leaf…or the almost identical network in the wings of a dragonfly. It seems as though the structure of living things, and non-living things for that matter, becomes more intricate and more elegant the closer you look…to the point where pattern dominates…to the point where pattern is all there is. And I am not aware that it ever stops…that there is any degree of closeness…any magnification where the structure breaks down. Even at the atomic level, especially at the atomic level, the structure maintains its patterns.

Scientists tell us that under that pattern and structure events are random, unpredictable…that indeed the apparent pattern that is our reality arises out of unpredictable interactions beyond our perceptions. And I am naïve enough to not believe them. I see no reason to doubt that the intricate and elegant structure goes as deep as deep is. Our perception may fail, our ability to understand and to predict may fail, but the structure, the elegance, the beauty, I see no matter how close I look, I choose to believe extends to the root of being…is inherent in reality.

In fact, it just may be the ability to perceive structure and pattern that is the most human thing about us. The ability to appreciate the elegance and beauty of patterns defines us, and defines our reality…no matter how closely we look! I believe it is part of our inheritance. I believe it is, in fact, the defining nature of the Creator to bring order out of chaos, to create structure and beauty, and that one of the strongest evidences of that we are of the family of creation is that we see that beauty and structure everywhere we look, no matter how closely we look.

And every macro I take reminds me of that. Happy Sunday.