I am hung up on flowers, obviously. And I am also once again compelled to comment on the power of the photographer’s point of view. The conventional view of flower is from the side and from a short distance. The tulip becomes something quite different when you view it from the top at close range.
This is one of my wife’s beautiful flowers, incidentally. I’ll admit that I did wander into the neighbor’s yard again today. But the pink tulips called me back home. . . .
Well, here they are: my neighbor’s purples tulips Water droplets from morning dew or from a spray bottle? I’ll never tell.
Canon 5DIII 1/80s f/7.1 ISO400 100mm
My wife has nice flowers but does our neighbor and the other day I couldn’t help but be drawn to her collection of yellow tulips, which had just bloomed. The light was poor but I enhanced the scene with on-camera flash. I rarely use flash but I have taught my students that it’s ok to use flash as long as it doesn’t overpower the scene. In the case of this photo, I think it works.
I call this post “Our Neighbor’s Tulips I” because she also has some amazing deep purple tulips and I am waiting patiently for them to bloom. And though I’ve featured them before, those who follow this blog know that I like 2nd chances on most photos I take.
I call this post “Finally!” because after what seems like and endless winter and cold spring, it finally feels like summer. And my wife’s daffodils are celebrating the occasion by blooming.
This photo, incidentally, started out as a completely different concept. In the failing light of a beautiful day, I noticed the heads of these daffodils bobbing in the gusty wind. And I thought this would be a perfect time to try dragging the shutter, a process that uses camera flash and a fairly slow shutter speed. I took 5 or six using this technique but didn’t really like any of them.
So instead, I put the camera as close to the ground as I could and tried to focus on on a single daffodil. After I took the photo, I noticed the camera was seeing a very interesting deep, blue bokeh in the out-of-focus boughs of the a pine tree behind the garden. And so I ended up with this photo. I will probably try the dragging the flash thing another time.
Once again a photo found me. I was engaged in the mundane task of putting our garbage receptacle away, when I noticed that the late evening sun was offering perfect, direct light on Deb’s beautiful Siberian iris patch, which had just gone into bloom. Knowing that I only had a few minutes of this particular light, I literally ran into the house to get my camera.
I took 92 photos of these flowers – I just couldn’t help it! Compositionally, this one made the “first cut,” in part because I am a slave to the rule of thirds and this photo exemplifies it. I shot this with my Canon 70-200 2.8L lens so I could get very good selective focus. And, I used a tripod.
Canon 5DII 1/640s f/2.8 ISO320 200mm
To set the record straight, calla lilies are not normal “May flowers” in South Dakota. These flowers were growing in the planter outside my aunt Betty’s California home. They were planted by a neighbor as a gift to and remembrance of the memory of Betty. They are as nice a tribute as any, if you ask me.
It was a sunny day in southern California when I snapped this photo. But it wasn’t warm. In fact it ended up being about 20 degrees warmer in our home town of Watertown, SD, on the same day. But the green houses aren’t flourishing yet in our part of the world.
If you are in Corona del Mar, and like plants and flowers, look up Roger’s Gardens. It’s a bit of a tourist attraction and well worth the visit.
These bedraggled flowers represent the last color that survives in my wife’s beautiful flower garden. Though they represent the end of summer and the eventual arrival of winter, there is still splendor in their blooms.