A Thread of Gold in a Field of Fire

Sometimes it pays off to carry only one lens. It forces you to create more with less. When I met a friend for a walk through a field in Pflugerville, I deliberately left everything else behind and brought only my Sony FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens. I knew going in that I’d be giving up the close, detailed macro shots I usually chase. What I gained instead was a different way of seeing the same field — one built entirely around reach and compression.

The header image conveys pretty much exactly what my eyes took in the moment we stepped into that field. Two wildflowers, growing in nearly equal numbers, had taken the whole place over: Firewheels (Gaillardia pulchella) and Stiff Greenthread (Thelesperma filifolium). Together they turned the ground into a sea of warm color — gold, amber, and deep red rippling out toward the tree line. I shot this one at 200mm, with a very shallow depth of field.

Stiff Greenthread (Thelesperma filifolium) is sometimes also called plains greenthread — a nod to the thin, wiry, thread-like leaves that run the length of its stems and give the plant its common name. It’s a member of the aster family (Asteraceae), and here in Central Texas it typically starts blooming in spring and can keep going into summer, occasionally lingering as late as October in a good year. The plant grows from a sturdy taproot that makes it remarkably drought-tolerant, which probably explains why it was thriving in a field that gets little help from anyone. Crush the foliage between your fingers, and it releases a surprisingly pleasant, herbal scent. Painted buntings favor the ripened seeds, and the plant hosts the caterpillars of dwarf yellow butterflies — one more reason a field like this is worth more than just its color.

The next two images were both shot at 600mm, and at that focal length the bokeh becomes far more pronounced — backgrounds dissolve into soft color instead of competing detail. I liked that in this one, a single Greenthread flower had grown taller than everything around it, holding its bloom just above a blur of Firewheels like it wanted to be noticed.

The last image is the real payoff of the day. Still at 600mm, I singled out one Stiff Greenthread facing the camera dead-on. It isn’t a macro shot, but at that reach the details still come through — the fine structure of the petals, the dark ring at the center where the disk flowers crowd together.

I went into that field expecting to miss my macro lens, and for the wide shot, I probably did. But by the time I got to that last frame, I’d stopped thinking about what I’d left at home. A single lens didn’t limit the story — it just made me look harder to find it.

That is the story behind the shots. For more like this, enjoy these related stories: Firewheel, FlowerHour, One Step, Stiff greenthread, Texas, and Wildflowers. Until the next shoot, keep chasing the light and the wonders it reveals.

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• Posted for Terri’s Flower Hour #45.
• Posted for Pepper’s One Step at a Time #24.

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Sources:

• Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Native Plant Information Network — Thelesperma filifolium (Stiff greenthread) — https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=thfi
• Wikipedia — Thelesperma filifolium — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelesperma_filifolium
• Native Plant Society of Texas — Thelesperma filifolium — https://www.npsot.org/posts/native-plant/thelesperma-filifolium/