Not only do they have gorgeous flowers, they have an entire, yes, an entire Hydrangea room. Now, I don't have a favorite flower (it is too hard to choose one!) but if I had to pick one, it would the Hydrangea. The pic below is just one of many pics that I took of the Hydrangia collection. I had fun changing the aperture settings and messing with the white balance. I had the best luck with a sunny white balance or on the shade setting.
I think that this one is a brugmansia? They had so many lovely pink and white ones. I tried to set up pics of them in a row, but really needed a tripod. I like the pointy ends of the petals. The only thing I would fix for this pic would be to tone down the white in the background. Maybe this is where photoshop would come in handy? ;) (oh, and p.s. I think it is poisionous. yikes.)
Ah, the jade tree. I love, love, love, love jade trees. Luckily, there was a pole near the jade tree, so I could steady my camera on the pole and get some really great shots. I couldn't decide which one I liked best, so I included three. Lucky you!
Ok, for this one, I don't know if the little blog picture is able to do it justice. Go ahead, click on it and enlarge it... nice, huh? I love the way that the light is coming through at the base of the palm.
The lighting isn't as great on this one, but I like the lines of the palm. It reminds me of a water slide...
This leaf was juuuust over my head. Each shot was a little shaky and I couldn't see the details in the veins, so I bumped up the ISO (to 800 or 1600, I think... way up there) so that I could have a faster shutter speed. I didn't do any cropping or other adjustments; this is the way I composed the shot.
For the cactus picture below, I knelt on the floor and set my camera on the railing of the flower bed (or whatever you call it). I had visions of it having an expansive depth of field, making the cactus look gigantic and making jokes about being stuck in the desert. Well, as you can see below... not so much. Still a neat shot, though. I also tried several white balance settings here resulting in some pictures being rather blue. I like the warm tones of this one though...
For the pic below I took a few shots in manual mode and then I wondered what the same shot would look like in macro mode. I switched my dial to the cute little flower icon, arranged the shot as close as I could to the orignal shot, focused, and clicked. I was both bummed and pleased to see that the pic I took in manual mode was equally in focus but with better color saturation. Bummed because it means that I can't be lazy and say "oh, I am just going to put this on macro.... it turns out better" and pleased because, well, I am a macro rock star. Take that!
This is the one taken in macro mode...
What do you think?
Well, there you go. I took a few more outside, too, one of the conservatory door (boring), a bunch of the lions out in front of the museum (cool, but, well, not too original. I had fun with my new polarizer, though!), and I managed to find some bees busy doing their thing, too (although, not as cool as my sunflower & bee pic from DC last year!). So, they didn't make the cut :)
Thanks again for checking out my pics and reading all of my random thoughts. Peace be with you.
3 comments:
Good job on the leaf. I really like the detail. How big was it. You made it look gigantic
The one that is all veiny? It was smaller than a 5x7 picture. I loved it. The fanned out one was pretty big though, like, a couple feet I think.
p.s. Thanks, man!
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