Small palafoxia flowers and a goer thereon

Click for better clarity, especially in the tiny bee’s minuscule hairs.

Also adjacent to a prickly pear tuna were some Palafoxia callosa plants, which are known as small palafoxia because their flower heads are small (no more than 5/8 in. or 16 mm across) in comparison to those of showier species in the genus. When I went to photograph a flower head on one of the small palafoxia plants, I found a more compelling subject, this tiny bee, and so I focused on it rather than the flowers, but you might say I was covered because the bee was definitely focused on the palafoxia flowers. The rosy color in the background came from the nearby tuna I mentioned, and the orange color came from the shallow round depression at the top of that inclined tuna.

This pastel photograph, like the last three pictures you’ve seen here, is from an August 22nd session on the right-of-way beneath the power lines to the west of Morado Circle in my Great Hills neighborhood of Austin. During these first four episodes of this right-of-way miniseries, the tuna has gone from focused subject to featureless but still richly colorful background. Two episodes remain, and though they’ll be tunaless they won’t be animalless.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman