BOUQUETS FROM THE PRAIRIE

The forecast was to be another sunny beautiful day so, I left the house around 4:30 am and headed to the Burnidge Forest Preserve. The previous days I scouted out a few areas to photograph the wildflowers and the Burnidge Forest Preserve had plenty to photograph so, I made that my priority today. I knew where in the preserve I wanted to go to photograph the wildflowers because, there were an abundance of them. It wasn't long before I reached the area of wildflowers I wanted to photograph. As I came upon the wildflowers, I noticed a few tall purple flowers standing out from the other wildflowers and knew that those were the blazing stars. The sun was just breaking the horizon and with the forest behind, it kept this area shaded during the early morning hours. Many species of wildflowers were in prime conditions to photograph including these hoary vervain that were near the blazing star flowers and false sunflowers that I had just photographed. With these hoary vervain flowers, I wanted to have a shallow depth of field to have the flowers stand out but, I also thought that the grasses behind would help compliment the hoary vervain flowers. I set up my tripod, camera, composed and focused on the hoary vervain flowers and began photographing. The hoary vervain or hoary verbena is a short lived perennial plant native to the prairies of the USA. It typically reaches a height of about 3.5 ft. Butterflies, skippers and many other insects are attracted to the flowers. (513-14)