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Mid-May is one of my favorite times of the year. The woodlands are coming to life and there seems to be a new visual discovery to be made at every turn. I love the way trillium were blooming at the base of a tree trunk along M22 near Empire.

Sleepy Time – Brad Reed While my aunt Sheryl was vacuuming her living room, she looked through the large picture window and noticed a fawn sleeping peacefully in her pachysandra bushes right next to the house. She immediately called my dad and me and we rushed over with our cameras. I put my lens right on the glass of the window and made this image. I love the heart shape of the bushes that surrounds the beautiful sleeping fawn. Nikon D800. F1.4 at 1/640, ISO 100. 85mm lens at 85mm. On a tripod without a flash. May 13, 2014 at 9:59am.

Mid-to-late May is a magical time to step inside northern Michigan forests. The leaves on the hardwood trees have formed but are most likely not yet full-size. The forest is splendid, especially because the not yet fully-grown leaves leave more space for sunlight to reach the forest floor. May 22, 2020 was a picture-perfect day for my wife, Debbie, and me to hike the morning away on the Mt. Baldy Trail at one of the Mott conservancy trails along M-22 north of Arcadia. We observed many scattered trillium and other wild plants the first half-hour but when, after a couple of miles of hiking, we came upon this hillside covered with trilliums, I felt like I had entered a trillium dreamland. It was time for me to stop and try to find a picture-perfect spot to plant my tripod and make an image worthy of what I was seeing and feeling. My wife knows me. She knew this was going to take time. When I am blessed to find a scene like this, I know better than to rush; I want to make the best art I can, art that moves me and hopefully others. Debbie likes to keep moving so, as she often does, she hiked on, leaving me to catch her when I knew I was finished, knew I had made an image I felt good about. Thank you, Debbie, for putting up for years with my stop-and-go approach to hiking; I know it is not easy sometimes. We had already hiked several hundred miles together in 2020 before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In all that time, I never made a photograph that moved me like this one. Our reward that day was curbside-pickup takeout sandwiches and beer from Stormcloud Brewing Company in Frankfort, savored with a tailgate picnic at Frankfort beach.

 

Star Trillium

Trillium Grand Rapids Aman Park May

Rachel and I went for a ride today looking for photos. We headed towards Stony Lake to check that area out. Not finding anything to photograph at the lake, we headed south towards one of our favorite places to see trillium. Sure enough, the forest was full of them. After asking permission of the landowners, Rachel and I walked the property looking for standout flowers