White Globe Lily… And Bug

White Globe Lily... And Bug
An insect on the top of a white globe lily flower

White Globe Lily… And Bug. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An insect on the top of a white globe lily flower.

Folks who follow my photography may have noted a rather large number of photographs of very small things recently, mostly a lot of wildflowers. This isn’t an entirely new thing for me, as I have photographed and occasionally shared wildflower photographs before. What has changed? Two things. First, I’m married to “the Georgia O’Keeffe of photographer photography, and she has a macro lens almost permanently attached to her cameras so that she can photograph this subject. Second, I finally decided to spring for my own macro lens, and I’ve been out trying to learn more about its use.

When viewed through the macro lens, photographs of flowers often end up being photographs of other things, too — bits of pollen, spider webs, dusk and dirt, brown areas, holes… and in this case, one black bug of significant size. I misidentified this flower for years, and I was grateful to a viewer who recently set me straight. It is a white globe lily. (If you want to understand just one of the reasons that I’m often challenged by naming such things, it is apparently also known as “fairy lantern, white fairy lantern, pink fairy lantern, lantern of the fairies, globe lily, white globe-tulip, alabaster tulip, Indian bells, satin bells, snowy lily-bell, and snow drops!”)


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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