The Cormorant, the Dragonfly, and the Bee: Cherry Blossoms

Showing posts with label Cherry Blossoms. Show all posts

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Spring Happenings

Spring is a great time to be taking pictures. The bright colors of blooming flowers are hard to resist, both for me with my camera, and for bees as well. Bees see color somewhat differently than humans, preferring blues and yellows and not so much reds, as red looks black to bees.

Nature has a way of showing off this time of year. I try to capture that in the images below.

Enjoy!

This is a Lenten rose (a type of hellebore). It is not a rose; it is in the buttercup family.

Green with Envy

A hyacinth:

Purple Wave 1

Purple Wave 2

Here's a daffodil (also called Narcissus, the formal name of the genus). This was taken indoors in low light.

Mood Setter

A backyard azalea, that I find particularly captivating, at least in this pose:

Seeking Truth

This bee likes it too.

Pollen Hunter

Here the bee goes "all in":

Nose First

These next two photos are flowering pear tree blossoms:

Upward Bound

Blue Sky Watchers

This next photo is of our purple leaf sand cherry (also called plum leaf sand cherry). It *is* a member of the rose family. I've been experimenting with photos on my Pixel 4a, a recent cell phone upgrade. Despite its single lens and small size, this cell phone can be encouraged to take remarkably good photos with a bit of care.

This was taken in "Portrait" mode, and enhanced using Remini, which is a cell phone app I recently discovered that makes some pictures sharper (especially out of focus ones) using artificial intelligence. While Remini works particularly well for faces, I find it does a surprisingly nice job with many flower photos as well.

Purple No-Rain

(back to my regular Olympus camera on a different day) Here's the same plant in bright backlit sun:

Setting Sail

Another hyacinth:

Curls Aside

This is a primrose, which is not a rose:

Color Pop

This tulip was one of the earlier spring flowers on display in our garden:

Pink Rules

Pink Petals

This next photo is an indoor Pixel 4a picture of a daffodil in a vase, using natural light.

Splash of Yellow

Here's another Pixel 4a photo of one of our cherry trees, also taken in "Portrait" mode, and enhanced using Remini (and Lightroom).

Blossom Out

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Macro Mardi

Macro Tuesday is not so alliterative, so I thought I'd throw in a little French to keep the theme going from yesterday's blog post. The Spanish "Martes" would have worked nicely as well. Thanks to Deb for the idea. Yes, though not a common event, we discussed the title of this blog post during breakfast this morning.

Bottom line is I have many more macro photos of spring buds and blossoms to share.

How about a lime green background! This is the way the "bokeh-ized" grass in the background came out of the camera. I understand lime green is this year's favorite designer color!

Purple Leaf Sand Cherry

Sand Cherry Blossoms

It has been fascinating to watch the progression of the Redbud buds: from red, to red and magenta, to red and magenta with white blossoms. Also, they are sparse no more.

Redbud Minnie Mouse Ears

Since deer love to eat tulips, Deb cut a few from outside and brought them in. This way we can enjoy them before they're suddenly gone. Turns out they grow and last just about as long inside as outside!
This next shot is indoors with regular room lighting at ISO 1600.

Tulip Colors

Back outside again...

Tulip Sex

Normally, I prefer a nice blue sky, but this day was completely cloud covered. These are cherry blossoms from a different cherry tree than the one appearing in my recent "Cherry Blossoms" post. I used an exposure compensation of plus 3 f-stops! This forces the sky to be solid white and brings in the shadow detail of the cherry blossoms.

Cherry Blossoms Against a Cloudy Sky

White on White

Crab Apple Blossom

Open Crab Apple Blossom

For these next two shots, I had the camera essentially on the ground in the grass.

Splendor in the Grass

Violet Attention

The Tickler

Upper Hand

Blossom Radar Dish

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Cherry Blossoms

This post is a set of photos I took of one of our two cherry trees. These are all taken with the 75-300mm Oly telephoto lens, most at 300mm (600mm equivalent). I enjoyed that I was able to vary the background color by simply pointing to a different section of the tree. All achieved nice isolation of the blossoms simply because they are shot with a telephoto lens at max magnification.

Personally, I feel this lens is way underrated by the "photographic community." I love the fact that I can carry around a lens with this incredible reach, and yet it only weighs 14.9 ounces and is a rather short 116.5mm in length. It won't work quite so well in dim light, do its modest aperture ability, but that's a worthwhile tradeoff, as I prefer good light to make for more pleasing shots in any case. These are taken in the morning light.

Can you spot the bee in this first one?