Hay!

Once it's hay, it's no longer grass, right?

When I was photographing Mt. Rainier a few days ago, I looked down and noticed that the haw was so thick and tall that it was falling over on itself. So I took a photo (several shots; two are combined in the panorama above).

Shot with what I had with me, the Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. A wider lens might have been nice, but you shoot with what you have. 1/1600th second, f/4.5, ISO 100. Adjusted the zoom lens as wide as it would go, 70mm. These were not really sensible settings; a slower exposure and a higher f-number would have given me more of the field in focus. But it was an impulse shot; I saw the variations in brightness, the weave of the stalks, the metaphors were strong: hair, brush strokes, and just the pure organic weave of the forms. I aimed; I used the settings I already had on the camera without even thinking about it. (Yes, sometimes this is catastrophic, but it was OK here, just not optimal.)

How did it look in color? Also interesting, but the black and white is special to me. I grew up on black and white film (I could easily develop my own, so very cost effective for a teenager in 1968), and the way it accentuates texture and for is still exciting to see