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During mid-spring, the Indigo wildflower presents its vertical array of blooms to accent the prairie with a stunning magenta color. On an outing to the Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge, I noticed this lone Indigo on the hillside. Its nice form and beautiful color prompted me to break out my makro-planar lens. With no through-the-lens metering on my medium-format camera, I have to remember that with any type of macro-range photography, an exposure increase is required to compensate for the additional extension of the lens from the film. This particular exposure required almost a full stop of additional exposure to correctly capture the subject. Luckily there was little wind that day, which allowed more relaxed close-up work. As with portrait photography, a aperture as large as possible usually serves to blur the background and distinctly offset the subject. These are indeed beautiful flora of the prairie.