Purple Passion Flower

While I attended a basic botany class in college, my familiarity with plant life is limited—unlike clouds and bugs, or even the stars. Walking down Cleveland Ave. the other day, purple flowers hanging from vast vines rapped my attention. I snapped some closeups using iPhone 7 Plus, which were okay. On the evening of July 27, 2017, I meandered back with the Leica Q in tow and, using the dedicated Macro mode and manual focus, captured satisfying shots.

They’re purple passion flowers, and new flora to me. Interestingly—no surprisingly—their presence is “absent/unreported” in California, according to USDA. Oh yeah?

The two selected photos are both crops. I chose the Featured Image because the opening bud to the left is in the same plane of focus as the stamen. When cropping the second—both in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom—I accidentally changed the alignment and decided to keep the perspective. Vitals are f/2.8, ISO 250, 1/60 sec, 28mm for the first and ISO 200 for the second. Timestamp is 7:02 and 7:03 p.m. PDT, respectively.