Pussy Willow Winter


As I explained yesterday, Saturday was a gloomy day outside but I took my macro lens out to search out an antidote in some bright and cheerful bits of colour.  In addition to some beautiful colours, I found that they were sometimes twinned with an optimistic hint of spring and what could be more cheerful than that? I know, it’s December. But this is Victoria, and “Canadian winter” is a phrase that has none of the usual meanings in this neck-of-the-woods, or part-of-the-patio in my case.

This pussy willow is in a very large pot on the edge of the patio. Since it is wont to spread its branches into our faces in many directions, we have taken to tucking the branches around themselves which is making an accidental topiary disk, slowly transforming to a sphere. The willow has a very dark maroon-brown stem which is a great colour all on its own. But this year it has set some buds early, which on close examination are truly lovely. It is one of our favourite plants because of the pussy willows in the early spring, many of which make their way indoors every year. The plant was started from a cutting – it was heading for the compost at my daughter’s art teacher’s house – rescued by my wife who just poked it into the dirt and left it do as it would. It has rewarded us ever since in many ways.

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Close up shots all taken with SMC Takumar 100mm f4.0 macro screw mount (m42) lens on a Canon EOS 5D MkII. The light was flat and low and the tripod was across town, so was shooting at ISO 2000, usually at f4 and f5.6 with shutter speeds in the 1/125th to 1/250th range though some slower, some faster. The blue cast is from a custom white balance setting left over from one of my son’s indoor shoots which I did not notice till after I had taken a lot of pictures. I think it just emphasised a cold bluish light from the dark overcast sky, and since it was cold and these pictures are kind of cold, it seems appropriate.

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20 thoughts on “Pussy Willow Winter”

  1. Pingback: Pussy Willow Winter II « burnt embers

  2. I really admire your macro work on subjects like this and it seem to come so easy to you. The compositions are outstanding.
    We have a mature pussy willow in the back yard and the buds are really beautiful but it’s easy to prune and seems to tolerate our cold weather well.

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    • Ken – thanks so much. I am not sure what it is about macro photography, but it does seem to come more easily than other kinds. Must be an affinity. But maybe experience too – most of the photography that I have done is as a side bar to my main work where I was the only person on a team that knew what a lens or shutter was. Thus I did the pictures, not because I was a photographer, or trained in any way. Anyway, that photography was always for documentation of objects and details of people working with objects and sometimes people working within a larger scene. That past focus on detailed documentation might explain my preference for macro shots, and for the greater ease that I now have with it, even though I have had a desk job for nearly two decades now with few opportunities for photography outside of kids and family snapshots.

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    • I had never noticed their colour before either. Possibly it’s one of those macro-lens effects. Maybe some other reader will chime in from colder parts with their observations.

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      • I suppose I should add, there are an awful lot of species of willow, so it could just be species specific. I have not a clue what Linnaean identity this pussy willow goes by.

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    • There is no doubt that I will be featuring pussy willows in this blog in the spring, or is that really the end of winter. They seem to hint at spring while declaring the end of winter is nigh.

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