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. . . .
As the flowers fade, the days get shorter and the nights get cooler, mundane shots of a simple flower in summer bloom start to look better and better. I took this photo in late June and the image file was gathering dust amongst the 12,000 photos in my 2012 Aperture library.
Canon 5DIII 1/400s f/2.8 ISO400 100mm
Yes, another pink tulip, misted by God with morning dew.
Or did the photographer use a spray bottle?
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.
As fall turns to winter, I start thinking about the transience of seasons. Where did summer go?
I think this is the third year I have photographed this lilly and this morning when I took my tripod and camera out to the garden, my goal was to try to see this beautiful plant in a way I hadn’t seen it before.
I have said before that photographers have the power to define reality by framing the field of view in ways that the human eye and brain don’t. Thus, we can show the “big picture” in a way that makes it interesting and we can move in close to show things that people wouldn’t normally look at. This photo is an example of this, I think.
When I took this photo, I stopped looking at the whole flower and instead looked at its parts, its lines and it colors. I also looked at how these parts related to the background. To me an important compositional element is the way the edges of the leaves define the green space in the middle.
Is it a good photo? I’m not sure that I could ever answer that question about one of my pictures. All I know is that I feel I met my goal of giving people a new way to look at the stargazer lilly.
What caught my eye as I drove by this beautiful bed of tulips in front of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis was the fact that there were a few yellow flowers scattered amongst all then pink ones. Look closely at this photo and you will see one small, yellow tulip.
I took a few shots of the yellow flowers thinking my theme would be “Nonconformity.” but I ended up shooting a plethora of pink tulips. The shots I liked best were the ones where I shot not the early morning sun. This way, the leaves and the heads are all backlit.
When I looked at this photo (which I had taken, processed and then abandoned), I was struck by how much these flowers look like newly hatched birds in nest waiting to be fed. Thus, today’s title.
Who looks at the back sides of lilly leaves? I do. Once again, I am photographing Stargazer lilies – but this time I was trying to see what I hadn’t seen before.
Incidentally, here’s a photo I posted almost a year ago that also gives a slightly different view of this flower.
When I took this photo, I saw a single pink rose. But, as is often the case, I saw other things as I began to process it. I don’t know how your broswer behaves when you look at my photos in this blog but on my computer when I click on the photo, I get a bigger view. And when I hover my cursor over the bigger view, it turns into a magnifying glass with a “+” sign on it. Try clicking on the photo then and you get an even bigger view.
When the photo is fully magnified to full resolution, you might be able to see what I saw and understand why I called this post “Another World.” While you are here, how about taking a look at the Crab Nebula and looking for similarities between it and this flower which is no bigger than a US quarter (or a 2 Euro Coin). The Crab Nebula has a diameter of 11 light years, by the way. I guess I’ve given away one of the differences.
Canon 5DII 1/60s f/2.8 ISO320 100mm
