Happy Sunday! This week, Sofia is taking the lead on Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #411 with a topic that seems easy yet difficult. Which is it? Or rather what is it? I guess we’ll find out.

When I was first saw this week’s topic, my mind immediately landed on this photo from the spring of 2019. This is, still, one of my all-time favorite close-up. I think it was somewhat of a lucky shot because I tried to replicate but to no avail. If you have make a guess, what would it be? A venus fly trap? A carniverous plant? There, I may have given part of the mystery away – it’s part of a plant – but I’m not giving away the complete mystery just yet, stay tune.

I feel like an abstract photo is the easiest way to produce a mystery. Just a slight jerk of the hand or someone bump into you as you pressed the shutter button, something like that. This photo was taken in a low-light setting. Some people like to turn on the flash on the camera, I’m not one of those people. The flash, to me, is too harsh of a light to make the image turn out natural. In a low-light setting, I would much rather drag out the exposure speed while holding the camera as still as my naturally shaky hand will allow than release the harsh light, even for less than a second.

I’m going to end on somewhat of an easier photo. This photo was taken during my second seed-starting season in 2023. I wasn’t growing as massive of a garden as I am now. My seed-starting station was inside the house. All the seedlings were in a corner of the living room on a 3-tier shelf. I remember being so frustrated that year because my mom would blame me (still does) for every sneeze. I ended up moving my entire setup to the garage the following season and the dark damp cold garage has been my seed-starting station ever since.

Anyway, one day, while my mom was at the office, I decided to play with my camera. I have a set of 4 macro screw-on lens filters – 1x, 2x, 4x, and 10x. It’s very time-consuming to screw the filters on and off, trying to figure what works and what doesn’t work, but when a photo does work, the result can be amazing. This photo was one of those instances.

Now, for the big reveal, the first photo was a photo of the spring buds on a cherry tree. Sadly, two years after the photo was taken, borers killed the tree from the inside. The second photo was a low-light photo of bubbles flying in the air. I took this photo last November when I went to see the largest Christmas lights display in Utah. This was part of the show. The third photo is a close-up photo of the leaf of a yarrow. 2023 was the first and last time I ever started yarrow from seed. These plants are still alive in the garden to this date.