Forget-Me-Nots (Entry in DerangedVisions Contest) and an Unforgotten Memory

Taken with my Sony Hx400V
ISO 100
1/160 sec. f/4 9.03mm

The image is cropped a bit to improve framing and has had slight modification to the levels in GIMP. And you should be able to click it to view it in a higher resolution, if I remembered properly how to do that... it's been a while.

This picture is my entry in the flowers contest from @derangedvisions.

I actually took this picture in May but although I've taken some photos since then that I'm happy with of flowers, I was drawn back to this one for a reason.

My love of macro photography began as a teen. My father let me use his ancient Pentax Spotmatic II to try to learn some basic photography (shooting only as had no darkroom access and he had the rolls developed--Usually ISO 200 film) and I discovered he had a set of bellows for the camera. I got put on some film restrictions because of the costs so I had to choose my shots carefully--and made a LOT of failures.

If you've never worked with bellows, they really teach you about the balance between depth of field and lighting. Even with 200 ISO it could be tricky to get a good shot. And the focal distance.... trying to shoot bees and spiders with that setup. Also it was so heavy to lug around and hold. Try hand-holding fully extended bellows with a 135mm lens on the end.

Anyway...

One day we went to visit my paternal grandmother and took her to a picnic at a small park in Chester County, PA. Grandmom wasn't very mobile then and Dad could park near a table we could get her to easily and she enjoyed the fresh air and visits. And the park had a meadow stretching back to a creek bend and I would often spend some time aiming the camera at things and deciding how to use my allotment of shots.

Don't get my wrong--Dad was quite generous about my film usage and it wasn't really strict, but having a digital camera today I really see the difference between "I have 32 shots on this roll and he won't be happy if I run out of film before the end of the month" vs "I can shoot anything and it costs nothing and I just delete the ones that don't work." And with no darkroom access, I couldn't edit or recrop my shots.

But at that park I discovered forget-me-nots for the first time. We didn't have them wild at my parents' place. I'd heard of them but never knew what they looked like until I asked my mom what the flower I'd found was and she told me. And I seem to recall having some not-awful shots out of the experience also.

Since then they've been one of my obsessions and having them in our own garden here in Denmark is a connection to some good memories from my past.

Forget-me-not blooms are tiny--like little fingernail sized--so they're easily overlooked and people often don't take the time to appreciate the details and how their colors change depending on how long they've been open. So I love pictures like this that can draw attention to overlooked beauty.

Thanks for making it all the way to the end of my crazy babble...