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
Tag Archives: spring
05-17-13 Our Neighbor’s Tulips I
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.
05-14-13 Finally!
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.
04-11-13 Aspirations
Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that what I call “A Photo A Day” has recently been “A Photo Once and A While.” Quite honestly, I’m fighting through the worst “blogging slump” I’ve had in four years. I can’t say why except that I’m a little jaded right now. I enjoy teaching photography at Lake Area Technical Institute, and I love my students but I am realizing that as much as teaching photography has given me, it also takes something away. I’m not complaining and I’ll have plenty of time to recharge in a few short weeks.
I will also admit that I’m a little bored with the dew dappled flower photos I post. But I posting one today, mainly because yet another winter storm has hit South Dakota and I’m looking out my window at at least 8 inches of new snow with more coming down. So my impulse was to find something colorful, and a set of iris photos I took last spring jumped out at me. I hope you like the one I’ve “developed.”
And, before I leave, a word about words. . .
Finding a title for my photos is sometimes hard. And it could be that even my title today is a bit redundant. But I like the word “aspiration,” which has the Greek word “spiro” as its root. Spiro means “to breathe.” Per-spire literally means “to breathe through.” Re-spire means “breathe again.” But “aspire,” or as in the title, “aspiration”, is a little more complicated. I’ll take the dictionary definition: an aspiration is “a hope or ambition of achieving something.” This iris aspires but probably doesn’t know it, especially today as it sleeps beneath a soft blanket of fresh, white snow.
Do I dare say that I am inspired (look that one up!) by what I just wrote. Today I have hopes and ambitions. I hope you do, too.
11-21-12 Primavera (Near Fort Randall)
When I say “primavera,” you might naturally think of pasta. Or, you might think of the famous painting by Boticelli. But primavera also means “spring” in many Romance languages, including Italian. And, because this photo shows the first blush of green on the bluffs above the Missouri River, I’ve given it a bit of a romantic title. It’s not a photo of apetizing food and it doesn’t feature women in diaphanous clothing. But does picture a serene and beautiful place in my home state.
Incidentally, it occurs to me that as winter arrives in our state, I start to looking for photos that are dominated by green. What does that say about me?
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05-15-12 Life Star
I took exactly one photo of this flower, in part because I had ventured into my neighbor’s back yard to look at her flowers. To get one photo, I had to step carefully into the middle of her garden and I felt awkward doing this – especially without her blessing. I need to go back.
As for the title, the inspiration was the Star Wars Death Star. Somehow, a cheery purple spherical flower seemed to be the antithesis of the menacing structure in the movie.
05-06-12 Warped Reality
If this is too abstract, I’ll tell you what you are seeing. These are water drops on the window that I look through when I am sitting at my computer. It was raining on Saturday and I was captivated by the look of the rain. I took several photos that focused on the rain drops but this photo is focused on the lens effect of the water drops.
And, through the lens of the rain drops, you can see the mesh of the screen on the window and the grass and trees in our back yard. But it is all upside down because that’s what lenses do. In fact, the lens of our eye turns the world upside down and then our brain turns it right side up again. The human body is a weird machine.
Click here to see another version of the same subject with a different point of focus.
About To Burst
A Day At the Getty
Real Flowers and Real Dew
A couple years ago I realized that garden flowers look better when they are covered in dew. Since we don’t always have dew in SD, I usually carry a spray bottle with me when I visit my wife’s garden.
But on this day, I was wandering around my aunt’s Southern California neighborhood looking for photo opportunities. And I found real flowers coated with real dew.