Full Circle With Milkweed

Milkweed’s popularity has exploded over the past few years, now that people are aware how important it is as a food source for monarch butterflies. I felt a little guilty over the summer when I cut a few stalks for my ditch flower photography project! But now, in late fall, nothing solely depends on wispy milkweed seeds as a food source so there was no guilt involved in gathering dried milkweed to take to the studio.

No guilt, and a lot of childish pleasure. Anyone else remember spending days hunting down milkweeds for the pure delight of setting the seeds adrift on gusty autumn days? I sure do. So as I roamed the scenic hills of Waubonsie State Park looking for milkweed pods, I reenacted those memories by freeing the seeds of quite a few pods that weren’t pretty enough to be used for photos. It’s still fun, even as a grownup!

But back to photography. I’ve been looking forward to shooting fall milkweed because of its potential – between the smooth lines of the stems, the rough pod exteriors and the silky seed puffs, a photographer has a lot of contrasting texture to play with (in addition to childhood nostalgia). With all that texture, milkweed is a playground for photographers who enjoy using light … and I spent most of the afternoon on the milkweed playground!

A few people have asked how the light works for these photos – I’m using two Speedlite-style flash heads mounted off the camera on light stands, one with a light modifier called a beauty dish and the other shooting through a white umbrella. The flash with the beauty dish supplies most of the light for the shot and the dish softens the light a little, so it doesn’t have a hard edge (like noon sunlight). The light of the flash that goes through the umbrella is really soft and fills in some of the darker areas. Both flashes are triggered by a unit on the camera. And that’s all there is to it!

Having the two flashes coming from different directions helped me light the milkweed seeds so they looked angelically soft, almost like they glowed from within. But the best part? When I’m done shooting, there’s a few more milkweed pods with seeds ready to spread!