Forget-Me-Not & Ferns

Photo quote for today: "When your mouth drops open, click the shutter." -Harlod Feinstein


I find the best way to enjoy a Forget-Me-Not is under a macro lens. These flowers are so small it's easy for the passerby to overlook these fragile beauties.

Garden Blooms

Photo quote for today: "Parks and gardens are the quintessential intimate landscapes. People use them all the time, leaving their energy and memories behind. It's what's left behind that I like to photograph." -Michael Kenna

It's hard for me to add any other words to today's quote, so please enjoy. -Mike

Trillium

Photo quote for today: "On one hand you want to see your subject well. On the other hand, you want to be caught off guard to retain the spontaneity. If you know your subject too well you stop seeing it." -Harold Feinstein

I very much agree with today's photo quote, you do need to retain that spontaneity with your subject otherwise you can become apathetic. When I find myself in that situation, my cure has been to really work the subject hard, exploring every angle until you see that something that rekindles your interest. Back when I was shooting film that approach would tend to run up my tab at the processors, but now with digital imaging you can go nuts without breaking the bank. The Trillium below is a good example; after some stiff editing I probably have twenty slides of the same bloom from different angles. This one however is my favorite, it's the one that peaked my interest when stopped long enough to really see my subject.

Lupines

Photo quote for today: "Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an excercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term - selectivity." -Berenice Abbott

How does one standout in a crowd? With flowers, such as these Lupines, it would be easy to loose the impact of the three individual stems if everything was in focus. So in this image I opened up the lens, and let the rest of the field go soft against the main subjects.

Spring in the Garden

Photo quote for today: "The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking." -Brooks Anderson

The first flowers to make an appearance in our garden every spring are the Pulsatillas. So last weekend, while cleaning up the beds, I dragged around my camera and macro lens and made these two images. I'm attracted to both the fuzzy texture of the new blooms and colorful centers, which in macro appear to me like an explosion of color you'd see a fireworks display. Once they've past the seed heads make for great abstract images.

Water Lily

Water Lilies are a somewhat of a challenge to photograph because they only open from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, which is not considered prime time for photography. Took these using a circular polarizer to control the glare and increase the saturation.

Sunflowers

Today I thought take out the long lens and focus it on flowers instead of wildlife. A long lens does a great job compressing the subject, and this field of Sunflowers was a prime location for just that type of photography.

Blue Flag & Ferns

I took this image in a large cove across the river from my home. They like it wet as you can see from the surrounding ferns so they tend to grow near the shores of the river, making them easy to find when I'm out paddling. In my area Blue Flags peak around Father's Day.