I will admit to a fondness for Milkweed. I had to overcome a prejudice to get there, as my dairy farming grandfathers left me with the distinct impression that Milkweed is a noxious thing that ruins pastures. It may, in fact, be just that…but it is also quite beautiful, or at least interesting, in most of its phases.

This is a windy day macro, when I should have known better than to try, but tried anyway. I wanted the effect of the wispy filaments and hard pods against the big autumn sky. I set the camera to 24mm macro (focus to 0 cm) plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function (for larger scale and greater working distance than the 24mm would have given me), got in close, flipped out the LCD so I could see what I was doing working that low, and blasted away at about 3fps until I thought I might have gotten something. I was, of course, concerned that the shutter speed and the focus would fail to catch a sharp image of the plant in constant motion. Still…gotta try.

When I got home and got the images up on the laptop I had to chuckle. Sharp. And full of energy, just as I had envisioned them.

Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Framing as above. f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.