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Thrifty Thursday: Prairie on the Cusp of Winter

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500.


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[Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 - $241]

By now the Illinois prairies have traded their summer greens for fall browns and golds. All that remains of the black-eyed susans that bloomed in June are the old flower heads, standing upright among the Indian grass.

Photographing with a point-and-shoot camera means an especially deep focal plane. Even the out-of-focus backdrop retains texture. Thus, composition with these small cameras is often more challenging than with the larger cameras whose shallow focal planes more thoroughly blur the backdrop.

Alex Wild is Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies the evolutionary history of ants. In 2003 he founded a photography business as an aesthetic complement to his scientific work, and his natural history photographs appear in numerous museums, books and media outlets.

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