Day 56: This strange orb...

...appeared in the sky this morning. OK so maybe it's not that extreme but Vancouver hasn't seen much sun over the last few months, and the temperatures are way below seasonal. Despite all the spring flowers and new growth, it hasn't really felt like spring. But a little bit of sunshine, and the promise of more to come, seems to have people smiling, myself included, despite banging my head off my keyboard trying to fix an annoying bug.

Well that bug kept me indoors for most of the day and it wasn't until I was heading home that I ventured out to look for a subject. Despite the bright sunshine, most of what I was interested in was in shade making it hard to get the kind of lighting and contrast to make a good photo. I tried a few but generally wasn't happy with them. I walked around to find a sunny spot and after watching a noisy flicker in the top of one of the tall leafless trees I just started taking photos of anything in sunshine: some trillium, false Solomon's seal, a squirrel with an apple core in its teeth. And a patch of nice little pinky-white flowers.

I didn't think much of the flowers at the time, being more interested in the false Solomon's seal but when I got home I found I didn't really like any of those photos despite all the fresh green and white blooms. With some head-scratching (and trying not to feel desperate - how could I fail to take a decent photo on a sunny day?!) I went back and forth until I unexpectedly settled on the flower below, one of those pinky-white ones. It was only when I cropped it square and fiddled a bit with the levels I found that I was losing myself in the detail in the petals and the pollen-tipped stamens. I'd found my photo after all.

Flower macro