Echinacea purpurea Hope, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This photo shows a Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea ‘Hope’. This a patented hybrid, with a portion of each sale donated by the wholesale growers to the Susan G. Komen For the Cure, a leading organization in the fight against breast cancer.

I’ve been growing exotic hybridized Echinacea to photograph. There’s no way you can get these at a florist, so to photograph them I needed to cultivate them. This was one of my first nice specimens, picked just before the onset of autumn rains.

I photographed the flower using a black velvet background, and bright but overcast daylight from the front and side. The finished image combines 4 captures at shutter speeds from 6 to 30 seconds. Here’s the full exposure data: Nikon D300, 85mm perspective-correcting macro, 4 exposures (6 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds) combined in Photoshop, each exposure at f/64 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.

Driving Nicky and Mathew to school this morning in the pouring rain I half-turned to Mathew, and said, “I love you.”

Five-year-old Mathew replied, “I know, Dad.”

I didn’t want to make Nicky feel left out, so I said, “I love you, Nicky.”

“I know, Dad.”

Compared to the vast feeling of love in my heart for these boys this seemed a bit too routine for me. I felt the need to add, “That’s good. It’s important to know you are loved by your father.”

Mathew: “You’re not ‘father.’ You are ‘Dad.'”

Puts me in my place.