Please excuse the load time...

These shots are for a critique session I'm attending tomorrow, so I'm uploading them full size.

A Break in the Clouds

Snowy Night

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Unfolding

Mr. Fokker Poppy

Ripples in the Lily Pond

Bottle Gentians in Beautiful Blues

If anyone checking out my blog tonight has any critiques, I'd love to hear what you think too!

Chicago Flower and Garden Show - 3.06.11 - Post 3/3

So this is my last post on the flower show.  Just a few more shots I thought were interesting but didn't fit into my other themes.

The Geometry of Plants

 Fun with macros/Annoyance with macros.  I really wanted to get both of these cactus 'fingers' in focus, but my camera was having none of it.  Even on manual-focus.  I could get one or the other, but not both.  This may have had to do with the limited options I have for focal length when shooting in macro.  I also wonder if I had known then what I learned last week about spot-metering if I could have gotten them to both look better. As you can see, despite being two parts of one plant, the lighting on each was different.  That was how bad the lighting was at this place.  All that said, there are some very cool aspects of this shot.  Look at the piece in focus.  I love the geometric pattern the spines make as your eyes travel from the far left edge up the cactus.  There's hexagons and triangles and rhombi.  I love it.  This is when macro photography is fun.

Jewelweed in Ruby and Emerald

These jewelweed leaves were gorgeous but I'm learning that Red is Hard.  On my LCD screen, on my computer screen... red is hard to reproduce.  This is as close as I could get, and my mind's eye still tells me it's not saturated enough, but when I try to turn up the saturation, even a little, the red becomes magenta and that's not right either.

Arctur African Attempts to Stretch

 My awesome little daisies again.  These are African daisies and I find it amazing how many varieties of African daisies there are out there - all of these have white petals and purple centers.  My best guess, given the pointed petals is that this is an Arctur African Daisy.  But if someone out there is a better horticulturist, feel free to correct me.

Pretty, Purple and a Total Mystery.

I have no earthly clue what these are, but they're really pretty.  Like I said in an earlier post, very few flowers in the show beds were actually labeled.  And because these are cultured flowers, I can't even use my normal tricks of looking for websites that feature the wildflowers of a given area and then look at everything in the 'purple' category.  I can't even use the identifier programs because they want things like native location and when they bloom.  Guess what?  Who knows?  It was an indoor show where the flowers were forced, so... *shrug*  If you've got an idea, please holler!

Shades of Blue

These are blue hyacinth.  The blue can be seen best where the flower attaches to the stem.  They're bulb flowers like tulips and daffodils, but have many flowers on a stalk, which always makes me think they're something else.

On First Reflection

And, of course, my (sort of) first water lily of the year.  Water lilies are one of my favorite flowers.  I only count this as 'sort of' because it's in a garden show.  But I suspect that when I start getting out the the Lincoln Park Lily Pond in the next month or so or the Botanical Garden when the tulips start coming up, I'll start finding some that are working their natural cycle.




Okay, that's it for that show.  Last week I was in Nashville, Tennessee and we took my 15 month old nephew to the zoo.  Nashville, like most other zoos, has some brilliant set-ups for some of their animals - like the outdoor meerkat exhibit with a cluster of babies! - and some that are just awful and unshootable - like the red panda who spent most of her time pressed up against the corner of the glass grooming.  Those shots and a discussion of metering coming soon!

Volo Bog - 9.04.10 - Post 1

This was my second trip to Volo Bog, and it won't be my last.  There's a lot more information on Volo Bog on their website, but the short version is that it's the only open-water "quaking" bog in Illinois - a relic of the last ice age!  It was the first genuinely cool day Chicago had had in months and I alternately needed my sweatshirt, wanted a heavier coat and was happy in my t-shirt, depending on the amount of sun and wind at any given moment.

Volo Bog

Adult Supervision

Okay, I have to say, this sign just amuses me, because when you see it, you can't quite figure out what needs adult supervision.  Turns out that if you go around to where that second sign in my shot is, there's a path down to a dock into a small pond-bog that has bird habitats and tadpoles.  There are a lot of school groups that tour the bog, so it makes sense, but on the surface, it's just this odd sign out in the middle of the path.

Vervain on the Savanna

Besides the bog, there's a large wooded and savanna area that I didn't get the chance to hike the first time I went out there because I was with a group.  Being on my own, I was able to walk the roughly 5 miles of trails and click to my heart's content.  This would have been significantly easier if we weren't having hurricane force winds.

No, really, it was windy.  Check out the flags in the parking lot.  This kept some animals in hiding, but others, like the dragonflies tended to land on something and hold on for dear life... which made for easier shooting if I could catch the plant when it wasn't swaying in the wind.

World Turned Upside-down

Anyway, the bog is fascinating.  This is a shot of the surface reflecting the skies and nearby tamarack forest.  Those are lilypads floating on the top.  I managed to catch this shot early enough in the day that the really, really nasty winds hadn't kicked up yet and the bog was fabulously still.

Waterlily Glow

I love waterlilies, as you may have noticed.  There's something about the way that the seem to glow from the inside.  The water here is so still it's black and the leaves of the lily pads are dark green, which makes the white just stand out and glow.

Light Shines Through

Here's one that's more open and has a fantastic reflection in the still water.

Ripple Effect

This part of the bog - the section that has the floating boardwalk around it - has thousands of ridiculously active frogs in it.  They were hopping up from the water catching bugs and disappearing.  There's something very peaceful about the lily and the ripples here.

Froggy Finger Hold

Here's one who sat still for a few minutes.  I like how he's hanging onto the leaf with his little froggy finger.  This is your good old, standard Green Frog.

Leopard Frog Lies Low

And this, as far as I can tell, is a Southern Leopard Frog.  I think it's a little on the young side and his spots haven't quite come in yet.  I know there are quite a few frogs still developing - in the next post I'll have shots of tadpoles and one of a polywog (a frog that still has the vast majority of his tadpole tail.)






And these were all taken in the half-mile of floating boardwalk (which makes for interesting shooting if you aren't the only one on it.  See my post about trying to shoot from a moving ship in the water.)  I hadn't even gotten into the nature preserve.

Chicago Botanic Garden - 7.25.10

So one of the great things about the Chicago Botanic Garden is that it changes monthly (or so) as new flowers go in and others go out of season.  When I went in the spring it was all about the bulb flowers - daffodils, tulip and the like.  Last month there were a lot more perennials like roses.

I fell in love with the water lilies, also known as lotus flowers.

Here's one with a bee on it. Nope... wait... Google tells me that's a yellow jacket.  A wasp, not a bee at all. [Yellow Jacket on a Lily in the Evening]

Same flower, different lighting.  I took this trip with a friend and we started near the lilies and ended there too.  Over the course of about six hours the lighting changed from full daylight around noon to evening light.  What a difference! And still attracting the yellow jackets.  This one makes me think of a watercolor.   [Water Lily at Midday]

An eastern pondhawk dragonfly on an opening lily. [Dragonfly on Lotus]

 I love the abstract made from isolating a small part of the lotus flower.  The white/pink tips, the shadows...

[Inner Lotus]

 Here's one in context.

[Lotus Unfolds]

I love this one not only because it's purple, but because you can see the yellow through the purple petals at the bottom.

[Purple and Yellow Lotus]

  Check out this bee!  None of my resources seem to be able to tell me what kind he is.  In other shots I got of him I was able to see that he has one yellow band behind his head and two on his lower abdomen.  He's fuzzy from shoulder to stinger.  That tan patch that looks like it's on his back is actually on the top joint of his leg.  Anyone have a clue? [Big Bee in Midflight]

These lilies are about the size of a small dinner plate.  Huge!  They're called Magic Lilies.
[Magic Lilies]

Here's one in isolation.  I love how the pistol and stamen are so prominent in this flower.

[Magic Lily Stretches for the Sky]

The roses were out and gorgeous, but the sun was so intense that day and at that time, that they were really tough to shoot.

[Peach Rosebud Unfolds]






Alright, ten pictures make a post.  Just a quick note to let you all know that my photography is for sale at my etsy site (http://www.etsy.com/shop/WizardAtWork).  If there's a shot you see here on the blog that you'd like a copy of, please let me know and we'll set that up. :)