Tulip
To grow tulips here in Berkeley, California you need to “force” them. A magical word to non-gardeners, all that “forcing” means is that the plant needs to be cold in the winter in order to bloom. So for a couple of months, as a bulb, this tulip lived in the back of our fridge.
Yesterday, after the bulb had blossomed into a beautiful flower, it was time to photograph it in the bright and warm mid-afternoon California sun.
As Ansel Adams once said, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” I made this image using my 200mm f/4 macro lens with its tripod collar mounted on a full-size tripod, the lens all the way stopped down, pointing straight down into the flower from a goodly distance (several feet) above it, and little in the way of photographer’s tricks.