I’ve been having a great time doing an online flower photography workshop. While I’m already a pretty good flower photographer (IMHO), I have been motivated to try out lenses I forgot I had (shot this one with a 50mm and one extension tube) and look for new locations to shoot. This one I just had to walk down the street to where my neighbor has an amazing patch of sunflowers. Nice of the bee to show up just as I was shooting. Very minimal post processing required.
Just started a flower photography workshop so I was out photographing in the butterfly garden at North Mountain Park when darned if a Monarch butterfly didn’t show up. It took its time exploring the butterfly bush and I was very happy to have my 180mm macro lens on the camera.
A little cropping, a little vibrance and saturation, a little sharpening. But really not much post processing required. Of course, I have another version that went through a full blown Photoshop artistry treatment.
One of the things I love about macro photography is that it allows us to see thing we might not otherwise. Bright pink stalks of fireweed line the highway on the Olympic Penninsula creating stunning displays, but how many of us ever look at the individual blossoms. I was surprised to see the little white curlicues when I zoomed in close and, of course, the dew drop was an added bonus.
This is a digital art piece I created using 5 different image of ferns. I was trying to emphasize the curly cues unfolding in different ways. I started out intending it to be more photo realistic but as I worked on it, it seemed to want to go in a more artistic direction.
Hurray, the Irises are in bloom. This one had a bland beige background so I had to come up with a new one for it but it helped to define the image so I like the new look. I also did some burning and dodging and added detail and saturation. This image was shot with my 180mm macro lens with an extension tube.
Sometimes I wonder why I keep going out to photograph poppies. I have so many gorgeous ones in my files already. But this one is gorgeous too so I guess you can’t have too many. I used the 180 mm Macro lens on the Canon 7D Mark II for this one. It was so windy last weekend I hardly had a chance to get it out. But there was a little bit of calm in the morning and I’m glad I took advantage of it.
Post processing was minimal. Just adjusted the exposure a little, denoised a little, and sharpened a little.
I was in the neighborhood of North Mountain Park on Tuesday and decided to just stop by and see what signs of spring I could find. There were lots but it was windy and threatening to rain. Still I managed to capture a few good images, including these pink blossoms. Before I was done with my walk it started to pour again.
So nice to see the daffodils blooming everywhere. I found this one in front of the nature center at North Mountain Park in Ashland. I love the pop of color added by the grape hyacinths!
I probably should have shot to include the whole stem but image this fat old woman with a tripod on her knees trying to see through the viewfinder at an odd angle and worried about getting run over. You do what you can. I still think it is a pleasing image.
In post I adjusted the exposure a little, added detail and just a little saturation and darkened the corners to give the daffodil center stage.
Finally, some flowers to photograph! I love these little guys for their dogged determination in appearing in February before all the other flowers and marking the hope that spring cannot be far away. I used by 180mm macro lens on these and was lucky that they were still hanging on to a few raindrops from the day before.
Traditionally this time of year I am combing through my images to find the top 10 to 25 or at least my favorites. this year with over 8000 images in my 2016 file (and yes some of them belong in the recycle bin) I decided it would be a fools errand. I’m up to my ears in completing an album of images from 2016 which is now up to 56 pages and I’m halfway through October. With 5 or six images a page, well, you do the math, it’s a lot more than 25. Some of the images got in because they are best to tell the story but still, they have to have some redeeming value to make the cut.
So, long story short, this Dutch Iris keeps popping up in my mind when I try to think of my favorite image of the year so I decided to just go with it and skip the filtering process. Ironically, with all the travel I’ve been doing, it was captured about two blocks from my house. It was April, it had been raining and was just starting to clear so the flowers were in prime condition and still had a few drops on them. I have a metal print of this one hanging in my downstairs bathroom, which is also serving as an art gallery.
I will also be using this one for the sidebar of my blog site so, no, you are not seeing double.