Morning Daisy (enlarge photo)

While visiting New Berlin, Wisconsin (a suburb of Milwaukee), I went for an early morning stroll through the Root River Parkway. This park offers a nice break from the otherwise mundane residential and commercial surroundings that are suburbia.

The parkway encompasses both banks of the Root River ... in the summer, it seems like more of a stream than a river. But fortunately, the banks are rich with moisture, and offer excellent growing conditions for a host of plants, including several varieties of flowers.

Situated on the west bank of the river, this particular daisy had been shaded all morning. Noticing that the sun was almost set to clear the nearby treetops, I moved into position. As light began to filter through the leaves and onto the petals, I captured this frame. The macro feature of my very sharp 35-70mm lens enabled me to get in very close to the flower and pull out all of the detail from the brilliant yellow center, and the dew drops on the petals. The flower, tall from stretching up to the thin light, was far enough off the ground to enable me to easily blur what would have been a distracting background. I used a relatively quick shutter speed to eliminate any possible movement of the flower as a light breeze was blowing.

This photo works because of simplicity -- nature provided much of the simplicity for me, but careful attention to in-camera framing played an important role too.

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