Inside a four leaf clover … if it is a four leaf clover…

Yesterday I was at a pool party with some friends, we were soaking up the sunshine and having a good time.

Then, one little girl – probably no more than seven years old – ran up to the adults.  “Mommy, mommy,” she said, “I found a four-leaf clover.”

And she showed it to us.  Sure enough, it had four petals and looked like a four leaf clover.

I said to the girl, “Please show me where you found it.”

“There’s a whole bunch of them, mister,” she said.  “I’ll show you.”

Well, they looked like four leaf clovers … but I always thought that clovers grew in the ground, like grass.  This batch of clovers was actually part of a weed-like climbing vine that creeped up the side of a wooden trellis.

And there were plenty of them.  Dozens and dozens of them, all in full bloom.

I have an idea.

I plucked two or three of the clovers, placed them in a folded-up napkin and took them home.

Hey, when you don’t have your Nikon gear nearby, you make do.

When I got home, I placed one of the clover plants on my flatbed scanner, and scanned that plant at 4800 dots per inch. 

Wow. That’s something.

Looks almost like it should have a 4H in the middle, doesn’t it?

I keep thinking about whether I should ever enter scanned high-DPI images in competition.  I mean, is a flatbed scanner REALLY a camera?

It’s almost the same argument as questioning whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, whether Hawaiian style pizza is really a pizza, and whether taco salad is actually a salad.  Discuss amongst yourselves.

Now I took several clover plants from the vine.  This one looks rather dignified.  But I also took one that, for lack of better horticultural description, was dying on the vine.  The leaves were withered and sun-burnt.

I had to make sure I didn’t accidentally fold or bend the plant petals, or the picture would turn out like crap.

Again, another high-DPI flatbed scan, a little adjustment with the highlights … and …

Wow.

And here’s the thing … scanning at 4800 dots per inch will reveal all the details and veins of the plant and all its age and decay…

… but it will also reveal that Chuck Miller needs to clean his flatbed scanner more frequently.  Dude, get a dust cloth and some glass cleaner, man…

Still… if I ever get the go-ahead to enter scanned images like these into competition…

I might be able to pull this kind of stuff off.

Call it the luck of the Irish.

Or the luck of a creeping vine lant that looks like a four leaf clover tree to a seven-year-old kid. 😀