More Flowers...Are You Tired of Them Yet?

I seem to be stuck in a rut of a walk about the neighborhood photographing flowers. Today's foray was done using the macro lens on the medium format camera rather than the normal focus lens on the smaller one. It was a bit a of a challenge since there is a breeze and moving flowers are hard to get in focus.



Rather than try for focus stacking with moving objects, I went for increasing the depth of field as much as possible. Normally, f/11 or so is as far as I go with this camera to limit diffraction and keep things really sharp and crisp. Today, I simply went for it and choose f/32 to get the maximum depth of field. I think they turned out pretty well.

In fact, with them at the lower resolution appropriate for the web, you really can't tell that they aren't as sharp as usual.

Around the corner is a flower bed along the sidewalk that has mulch that is really retaining the moisture. As a result, it is growing mushrooms. Finally, a photo of something completely different!

This is a very dark purple tulip. I liked it in monochrome to really separate it from the background and highligh the water and small white speckles inside the bloom.

This flower is such a delicate pink that it just had to be in color to appreciate it. The pastel pink on the textured fragile petals make this a nice composition.

In fact, looking at this flower has brought a new notion to mind. These delicate colors and textures remind me very much of the sorts of things one see in women's clothing.  Although I'm sure it was obvious to everyone but me, I now realize that it is not just that women choose to wear flowers on their clothes, their clothes are often inspired by flowers. The breezy linens and complicated hair-do's are not just for comfort or a social statement, though they are certainly that, they are also very reminiscent of the translucent flower petals and the proud business parts of the blossom. As women's clothes historically moved from the practical to the stylish, it is clear where the inspiration came from.

The contracts of the purple petals and the yellow/green leaves causes the flower to jump out at you. the small aperture insures that all the petals are in good focus while still the leaves in the background begin to blur.

This flow is so interesting, I photographed it twice. Here are two blooms side-by-side. The petals are a bright red on the tips and I used a red filter (in software) to lighten them. The result is more airy feel to the densely packed petals and an accentuation of the textures. This also darkens the stamen in the middle to really give a strong contrast there and anchor the image.

With a green filter, the petals darken to something more nearly like their natural density and the center parts lighten to again give a good contrast. I couldn't decide which I liked better, so you get them both. This on also focuses on one blossom rather than two. I quite like them both.

There is something about this last image that puts me in the mind of snail. With the stamen resembling tentacles on the left side and the leaves suggestive of a shell or, perhaps, the pointy parts of a nudibranch, it feels a bit like one of those images that never looks the same way twice. The longer I look, the more I see. I hope you find it worth a minute of your time as well.