The Cormorant, the Dragonfly, and the Bee: tulips

Showing posts with label tulips. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Spring Happenings Continued

More spring color to share! Plus one bird.

Stem to Stern

Crabapple trees have wonderful spring blossoms:

Hardly Crabby

A Star is Born

Petals on Alert

A species tulip and grape hyacinth:

Standing Out

More of our purple leaf sand cherry:

Branch Alive

Rich Endings

V is for Victory

Robin's eggs:

Blue Collection

Sadly, these beautiful blue eggs (previous photo) under this robin (next photo) disappeared a few days after this photo was taken; hopefully, the robin had more baby-making success elsewhere.

Egg Warmer with Something to Say

Dive Bombers

Open for Business

Bloomin' Branch

Sunday, May 23, 2021

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

Friday, May 29, 2020

Parrot Tulips and More

Parrot tulips are more "flamboyant" than most common tulips. Their petals have a unique fringe design with scalloped edges. They're a delight both outdoors and indoors.

The photos in this post are mostly black parrot tulips, which are a deep purple color. When strongly lit, the petals look more red.

This is such a photogenic tulip that I've included several different views here. I've also included a few other flower photos and one frog to break up the set as you scroll through.

This first photo was taken on an indoor windowsill.

Fringe Curve

Rising Above

Here's a blossom on our crab apple tree:

Neck Pillows

Grape hyacinths provide a nice break from too many red hues:

Grape Trees

These next two photos are also from our indoor arrangement:

Inside Zone

All Frills

This frog was watching me closely while I took outdoor pictures:

Frog in Mulch

Parrot Petals

Life in the Center

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.