Day 133 – Hexagons Return at Golden Hour

The field was full of dandelions, but this one was the only one with a perfectly round seed head, standing on its own. It contrasted nicely with the dark trunk of the tree and the warm sun behind it, so I went low to bring those three elements together in the frame.

This was the first time I really tried to play with lens flare on this lens. The sun was almost straight into the frame and on the screen I could not see exactly what was happening. Only later at home did I notice how well it had worked out, with the warm haze and the long flare across the grass.

I stopped down to f/2.8. Wide open the whole frame tends to wash out, and the hexagons (hexagons are the bestagons) in the highlights disappear. At f/2.8 the foreground and background still fall away nicely, but the seed head holds its shape, and those small hexagonal highlights start to show up around the dandelion. The lens just feels like it sits in a better place there.