Greenhouse Winter Warmth

Deb and I recently visited nearby Weston Nurseries' greenhouse to enjoy a brief respite from the cold winter weather. While Deb perused the plants in the greenhouse, I was drawn to the orchids on display, and one wooden sculpture.

Whether or not the center of orchids resembles small people, skiers, angels, or something else, you can decide; regardless, I find their design a natural wonder. These are all Pixel 4a cell phone pics.

Take a look below.

WN Orchid 1

WN Orchid 2

WN Orchid 3

WN Orchid 4

I neglected to take note of the name of the artist who made the wood sculpture shown in these next two photos. My apologies to the artist. (After that is determined, I'll update this blog.)

Floating in the Clouds

A closer view:

Long Meditation

WN Orchid 5

WN Orchid 6

All photos © 2022, all rights reserved.  Contact phil@philslens.com for licensing or to order prints.

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Conservatory of Flowers

Deb and I visited San Francisco in June to meet my new grandson. (Yay! Very exciting.) While there, we also did some local sightseeing. The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park was a joy to visit. Neither of us had been there before. The interior is kept very humid. The tropical environment keeps the plants happy. All flora in the Conservatory of Flowers are quite stunning. Witness these examples below.

Deep Pocket

Hanging Pouches

Inner Space

Jaws

Among the Lily Pads

Extended Fingers

Purple Water

Volcano Inside

Yikes! Look at the fangs on this plant:

This Thing Bites

Many of the orchids appear to have faces.

Little Skier

Googly Eyes

One Drop Below the Tongue

Scowl Face

Surf's Up

Unfurled Grace

Cones and Whiskers

Alive and Abundant

All photos © 2018, all rights reserved.  Contact philslens@gmail.com for licensing or to order prints.

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Indoor Flowers and Focus Bracketing

While the beautiful colors of outdoor flowers are hard to find mid-winter in New England, there are still indoor flowers to delight. Here are a few quick samples.

You are probably familiar with HDR, high dynamic range photos, where photos of different exposure get merged. Most cameras and many cell phones have this capability. In contrast to that, my camera also has a new focus bracketing capability, as explained below.

The orchid below is shown three ways: in a single "best" photo, as a focus bracketed stacked photo, and as one of the photos in the stack. My Olympus camera's new focus bracketing/stacking feature in the latest firmware allows me to take several identical photos (in this case, ten, though one could stack a few hundred if one wanted to!) at slightly different focus distances from one another and merge them together into a single photo with a much higher depth of field (area in focus) than any of the original photos individually. While the camera takes the bracketed set of photos, I actually merge them later in Photoshop. Focus bracketing is a pretty neat feature and I've had some fun experimenting with it. I still enjoy the soft "bokeh" of the out of focus areas in the single photos, so I'm hard pressed to decide which version I prefer. Which do you prefer?

Here's the orchid at its best in a single normal photo using my 60mm macro lens:

Orchid

Next is a focus stacked version of the same orchid. Notice how more of the orchid is in focus. Note that the above non-stacked photo is actually not one of the ten used to create this focus stacked picture, but was actually taken a few moments later, as I preferred its lighting and composition to any of the ten.

Focus Stacked Orchid

For reference, here's one of the ten photos used in the above focus stacked composition. You'll note that it is uncropped, and I hadn't yet magically removed the dark lines of the orchid's support.

Orchid - Uncropped

We have other indoor plants as well. Here's an African Violet (not focus stacked). See how its textured surface sparkles.

African Violet

All photos © 2016, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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