Maple Seeds, Backlit

For a little while in the early afternoon, the sun is behind the red maple tree in the front yard.

I have wandered around our yard with my camera many, many times, but it seems there are always things I’ve never noticed before. Like this maturing maple seed, on a red maple in the front yard.

It is so bright because the sun is behind the tree, and a few rays make it through all the branches and leaves to illuminate this seed wing.

The maple seeds also look pretty cool when illuminated from the front; here’s a photo I took near sunset last night. The red sunset light gave the seeds and their wings a beautiful mahogany hue.

These photos were taken with a new macro lens I have built from parts. The original lens comes from a Schneider-Kreuznach machine-vision lens, with a focal length of 80mm. I used some optical grade threaded tubes to build a functioning macro lens which I can attach to my Sony camera and walk around with. The sharpness of this lens is amazing.

Here are a few additional maple seed shots.

Maple seed, front and back illuminated.