A Surprise In The Backyard

When you feed birds untold amounts of sunflowers over the course of a few years it only makes sense that one or two may grow over time. This year the feeders are down because of whatever is going on with the birds, but nature found a way to combat that. Very near my feeder a couple of sunflowers popped up. Only one of them has opened so far, but it is beautiful. While making photos of it this little bee stopped by it. It made for a cool image that was unexpected in so many ways.

The Golden Ratio

The center of this flower is another great example of the golden ratio. This weekend I saw a book while out about Fibonacci and nature. I didn’t have time to flip through it though. As it turns out all that I had to do was to walk out into my backyard to see the golden spiral in action. It is amazing how often this pattern shows up. Most of my framing and cropping in photography is based on the golden ratio and the golden spiral. Of course there are always exceptions including the photo above.