Canna Lilies

Flowers are one of my favorite subjects to photograph  – I’ve amassed nearly 2,000 flower photos of flowers since taking up photography four years ago.  What I’ve discovered is that some flowers are more photogenic than others!  Maybe it is because the petals are oddly shaped or gangly or, often, it’s because there is lots of space between the petals and the leaves.  Red is always a tough color to get right in camera, too.  Who knew flowers could be so difficult!   Canna lilies seem to be one of those problem flowers for me,  but luckily  I ended up with a few good shots this past May when I spotted some growing wild by a pond.

 

For this photo, rather than using the pond as the background,  I decided to use a texture, made by duplicating and blurring another shot of the same group of flowers.

Roses Are Red

In one of those happy coincidences, I happened upon a patch of roses in front of one of the Recreation Centers in the community where I live the same week roses were the theme in a flower photography group I belong to on Facebook. I would have never spotted them if I hadn’t been turning around in the parking lot.  They provided me an hour’s worth of fun with my Lensbaby as I tried to capture perfect and not-so-perfect specimens

 

Sunflowers!

Sunflowers and Autumn just go together.  Saturday I visited a farm that had a big patch of yellow smily faces and I’ve been playing with them in post processing ever since.

Lotus Flower Trio

One of the things I love about photography is that you can start with the same simple subject (in this case a flower) and then depending on how you compose and process, end up with completely different images.   Here are three takes on the lotus.  They aren’t the same exact flower but all were shot the same day in the same location.

Mystery Solved

Couple of weeks ago I spotted these leggy brown pods growing near a pond.  What intrigued me was the way the black seeds were still entrapped, even though insects, perhaps,  had eaten away at the pods.  It reminded me of little bird cages!

 

After posting this image on the sites of several Facebook photography groups I belong to, and mentioning I had no idea what kind of plant this was, several people suggested milkweed.  But I didn’t think so.  It got me curious so I returned to the scene of the crime and realized that the pods were growing among plants with yellow blooms.  Ah ha.  More research and I discovered these are the pods of wild canna lilies.  Mystery solved!

 

It’s Good to Be Flexible

New Kid on the Block

Bottle Brush Visitor

Wal-Mart Dahlias

I’ve found the Garden Center at Wal-Mart is a treasure trove of floral possibilities.  No, not to include in my landscape; to shoot with my iPhone.  These dahlias were gorgeous.

Orange You Glad It’s Spring?