I photographed a beautiful field of lupines in a neighbor’s yard yesterday. I’m told this field is the natural result of four lupines transplanted from a friend’s driveway where they were “weeds”, 18 years ago. It is mind boggling how the huge variety of colors and shapes could develop when many lupine fields are a fairly uniform purple.
I took some group “scenic” shots with a lot of depth of field, shooting both verticals and horizontals.
Then I worked in closer with shallow depth of field.
I personally like the shallow depth of field ones better.
While there I was able to photograph some bees. The orange mass on the bee’s legs is a pollen basket or corbicula. It contains the pollen that she has gathered from the flowers. Female bees feed their offspring with pollen carried by this special adaption for holding and transporting pollen. After the bee visits a flower, she begins grooming herself and brushes pollen gathered on her body down toward her hind legs and packs the pollen into her pollen basket. A little nectar mixed with the pollen keeps it all together, and the hairs in the pollen basket hold it in place.
Be sure to check out the Orange and Black Birds in the preceding Blog.