Shot in late February, on one of the first warmer and sunnier days after an unusually extensive snow spell on the Lower Rhine, these crocuses really quite literally struck me as heralds of the nearing spring, especially after the winter lockdown. The way I captured them at F4, they represent a departure from my usual strategy of using apertures like F5.6 to F7.1 for a tad more DOF on the 35-mil Macro Limited. However, on that day with its unignorable breeze on the dainty flowers, I wouldn't have got any sharpness anywhere without a short shutter speed, and so I embraced the super-thin macro DOF that would result from it.
Getting at least the stamens of one of the triumvirate in critical focus was essential, but over a number of short bursts I hade achieved just that, as I noticed on the computer back home. But on top of that, I found it had also resulted in creating a sense of arrested wind shake, the morning sun, and a mood of dreamy tenderness.
A full-res JPEG can be viewed here:
https://needacreate.smugmug.com/Early-spring-2021/i-9zH6wbT/A