Red Something Somethings. Canon EOS 5Ds, ƒ/5.0, 1/640s, ISO 400, Tamron 85mm, macro ring flash assist.
Depending on who you talk to, my memory is either amazing or appalling. My day job is working as a commercial insurance broker. I really like to go deep into the fine print and can quote chapter and verse when it comes to the policy wordings of Canada’s larger insurers. I’m particularly expert on Intact Insurance’s LR20-3 commercial general liability policy wordings. I’ll explain something about how a wording applies to a specific situation and my co-workers will ask, “how do you remember all that?!?” I don’t know, I just do. However, do you think I can remember the name of a freaking flower I see every day for most of a season? Nope.
My standard fallback position when I don’t know the name of something is to refer to it as a something something in the image title or caption. This happens a lot because, other than lilacs or dandelions, I can’t properly identify a flower to save my soul. On the rare occasion when I do get the name of a flower right, it’s a given that my wife was in the room when I posted the image and I asked her before uploading. All attempts to name names of flowers and other things without my wife’s guidance end in disaster.
I spent this past Saturday tooling around in the rain, going from one flower box in town to the next grabbing images of pansies that had rain drops on them, that were filled by rain, and that had been flattened by rain. A plethora of pansy pictures, to be sure. I proudly Instagrammed said pansies for a friend. His comment? “Those are petunias.”
Oh.
Apparently Not a Pansy. Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus, ƒ/2.5, 1/120s, ISO 50, 4.3mm
And it’s not just flowers I suck at identifying. I was photographing something scary looking on some sort of flower I also couldn’t identify. I was being as careful as possible not to provoke the bug because it could have been a dangerous, bitey, or stingey bug. Worse, it could have been one of those murder hornets that I have heard tell decapitate nearby humans and then have toga parties afterwards.
Something Something Bug on a Something Something Flower. Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus, ƒ/2.4, 1/564s, ISO 50, 4.3mm
The aforementioned friend stopped by my comment section on Instagram. “Hoverfly,” he ejaculated. I Googled it. Apparently they are regarded as beneficial since they don’t behead humans and hold toga parties, but control pests smaller than Liberals and New Democrats. They definitely don’t bite fingers off of photographers.
Oh.
The petunias weren’t pansies, but it turns out that I certainly am one. I may just stick to landscapes in the future. At least I can properly label trees and rocks.