Botannical – Page 2 – A photo a day for 365 days………and beyond

Day 300 of 365!!!!

Flowers to celebrate — A flower to celebrate

Day 300 of 365.

This is a bit of a milestone because there was a time in the very beginning of this challenge where I wondered if I would make it to 50 days, never mind 300, and now I am well and truly on the home stretch. I can actually see the finish line up ahead and the crowds are cheering me on.

But what am I going to do with myself when I reach that finish line? Or more to the point, what am I going to do once I’ve crossed that finish line?

This is a question that I had not really considered until last week when the looming dilemma was first mentioned by my boss. What am I going to do with myself? I am going to have at least two hours a day where I am not committed to my blog.

Do I continue with the blog or do I create a new one? Or do I not blog at all? I really can’t continue with this blog because it is titled “A photo every day for 365 days”. Once I reach day 365 it is technically done…..finished……final…..complete.

A part of me already wants to start another blog, but a blog that would not be for general consumption. I’m really enjoying the writing aspect of blogging. I enjoy the creativity that it has brought out in me, however I have often found myself steering away from things I really want to write about because I know that my mum and dad are reading it, as well as my boss ……and my best friend’s young boys love to hear what I’ve written. I’m sure that I would have to create a secret identity and I definitely wouldn’t be publishing/sharing on my Facebook page.

And there’s a direction that I want to take my photography in. Places and themes and styles that I want to explore, but I’ve still got a bit (a LOT) to learn first and there are things that I will need before that direction can be taken. There is also a huge amount of confidence that I am going to require before I can contemplate initiating my ideas.

What I will do at the end of this challenge is begin the new challenge that I have in mind. I am going to start entering competitions. I have joined a camera club so will aim to enter their monthly comps and I will keep my eyes open for other events and competitions that I can take a stab at. It is time I was brave.

I have also been told, by my friends, that I need to stage an exhibition of my photos from this blog and turn the blog into a book. If I decide to do either one of these I am going to be busy for the next 6 months!!!

Only time will tell.

The most important thing to do first is actually finish the 365 days. Keep cheering for me friends. Your encouragement and support is what will help to get me over the line.

Break the rules

When you are given the opportunity to spend some time with a photographer of many years experience, who has won awards, has taught beginners how to take their camera out of automatic mode and create beautiful images and writes the actual training courses for Nikon school you grab the chance with both hands and you try to absorb as much information as possible.

When a three-day event features talks and workshops from incredibly respected and admired photographers you get your tush there and take a seat in as many seminars and talks as you can. Because while you have your ears and mind open to the information being freely offered, there are pearls of wisdom and tiny titbits of advice that may be light-bulb moments for you. A throw-away remark or an answer to a question that makes your inner beginner photographer pull out its imaginary pen and paper and take notes.

One of the many weekend gems I heard was “Break the rules”.

Break the rules. Yeah!!!

Photography is full of rules. You should do this. You can’t do that. You must follow the rule of thirds. Don’t forget the photo’s need for leading lines. Rules, rules, rules. To a beginner and novice like myself, these rules can be overwhelming. Just figuring out how to work the basic buttons on a Digital SLR is difficult enough. Throw in a few dozen photography golden rules and you start to enter panic territory. And that is just taking a photo!! There are another thousand rules involved in post-processing.

But photography is art and without people offering different views, ideas and perspectives there would be no cameras and we would still be drawing on cave walls with dirt and blood. Somebody has to bend or break the rules in order for their to be growth.

Today I broke a rule. I took my photo into the sun. But I like it. It’s not the first rule I’ve broken and it won’t be the last.

A confused flower in macro

I promised to show the quirkiness of my astounding Azalea. The Azalea that is mainly pale pink flowers, but also has some solid dark pink flowers.

Well…………Today as I was squeezing my lemon, I happened upon another anomaly on this intriguing plant. A pale pink ‘normal’ flower with a stripe of deep pink on a couple of its petals. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I would never have believed it.” (Say that in your head with a quaint Southern belle accent)

Of course, this unusual bloom was in an awkward place on the Azalea plant so I had to pick it off of the bush and bring it inside to capture it photographically so that you would believe me too. After all, if there’s no proof how can anyone believe that something is real or that something actually happened.

Now THERE’S a topic for another blog entry!! That could go on for hundreds of words. The debate over trust and faith in a person. Can you trust in the honesty of someone to believe what they tell you, even if it seems implausible? Does there have to be some form of physical proof in order for a person to decide if something is real? Which naturally leads into the whole religion and God debate……..

But getting back to my peculiar plant. I did take a photo of the confused bloom. I also climbed into the garden bed to take a photo of a handsome specimen of the blooms that are almost solid pink which had been my only intention.

Same parent plant as the flower from yesterday.

Pretty flower in macro

After yesterday’s burnt offerings I thought I should lighten things up with a pretty flower.

I have a magnificent Azalea bush that grows outside my kitchen window. Fortunately for the Azalea, it had been planted by the previous owner of this house or else it may never have stood a chance of surviving. I’m not saying that I would have killed the Azalea, but I did have to send a lovely Fuchsia to my mum and dad’s house to live because it’s very existence was under threat by my lack of gardening skills.

I love plants and flowers and trees, but if they need fertilising or pruning or maintenance of any kind ………. they’re in trouble. When it comes to me and gardening it’s low-maintenance all the way. The plants have to be tough around here because there is a very good chance that they will face a fair amount of neglect.

I do prune my standard rose though. Every year. Probably late. But I give it a good ol’ military-style haircut and it comes back smiling every time. My dad comes over every so often and gives the Azalea a good hacking which it seems to appreciate.

But back to the amazing Azalea……….. I love this plant. When it is in flower, like it is right now, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. It brings a gentle smile to my face every morning when I’m standing at the kitchen sink squeezing my lemon. And ‘squeezing my lemon’ is not code for something naughty. I am squeezing a lemon.

This Azalea also has a special little quirk. Most of the flowers are a delicate pale pink but there are some sections every year that throw flowers that are almost a solid dark pink. I will grab a photo of the dark pink ones soon. They’re in an awkward spot on the plant that I can’t reach easily. I may just have to pick them and photograph them indoors.

Today though, is a shot I took after I had given the plants a bit of a drink. The photo was taken with my el-cheapo macro attachment that I love.

When flowers transform into fruit

Spring has to be one of the most miraculous times of year. Suddenly, magically, those branches that looked lifeless and bleak have begun to grow leaves. Trees are festooned in a riot of colour and perfume as blossom and flowers greet the sun. The sound of bees drowns out the sound of traffic as these busy workers frantically dash from flower to flower gathering pollen and by doing so they begin a valuable sexual, plant-reproductive process.

The busy bee-dance from flower to flower connects boy flower-bits to girl flower-bits and girl flower-bits to boy flower-bits which in turn transforms pretty flowers into delicious fruits. Complicated I know, but where would we be without our apricots, lemons, oranges, bananas, strawberries, plums, peaches and apples?

The transformation from flower to fruit is so fast. Only last week I was photographing the apricot blossom and those bees. Already this week I can see the fruit starting to form. Tiny, fuzzy little balls of green where just a few days ago flowers bloomed.

Now I just have to wait patiently for nearly three months before I can enjoy the fruits created from the labour of those busy bees.

Childhood flashback

As I walked to the GP’s office today I saw something that brought back memories from my childhood. Memories of sitting on the grass with friends, picking the daisy flowers and making daisy chains. We used to put the finished chains on our hair as halos or we made really long chains and wore them as necklaces.

The idyllic memories of childhood. Warm sunshine, good friends, happy faces, childhood innocence. Rose coloured glasses, baby. Take them off and see the real childhood.

My memories were also of the terrible scratching and itching I got from sitting on the grass, generally couch (pronounced cooch) and rye grass. Hives and red, itchy lumps…..oh the joy…..oh the memories. Add in red, itchy, puffy, watery eyes and the stuffy, yet persistently dripping nose and my childhood memories of making daisy chains are complete.

Back when I was a kid there was no Zyrtec or Claratyne. There was Sudafed and Polaramine, but they were next to useless. We allergy and hayfever sufferers had to suffer through our symptoms……. And by god did we suffer. There was no relief apart from the shower at the end of the day. And then that relief was so short-lived because the towel we used to dry ourselves on and the sheets and pillowcases that we snuggled into had been dried on the Hills hoist with those fantastic spring and summer winds that were filled with the very allergy causing bodies that we had just washed off.

Oh the joy when, as an adult, I discovered the clothes dryer. I don’t care how lovely a drying day it is, if it’s a north wind or its peak flower/blossum season the sheets and towels go in the dryer. Sanity and happiness take priority over saving a few cents on the electricity bill any day.

Today I made a daisy chain. I wasn’t able to make the slit in the stem with my fingernail as I did as a kid. What’s with that?? Are my fingers so much bigger and the fingernails that much thicker than when I was a little girl? It took a lot longer than I thought it would. We obviously had a lot of spare time as kids. I’m not even sure I got the photo that I envisioned in my brain. Not even the dogs would let me put them on them in a hippy, flower-child inspired photo.

Would I go back in time to be a kid again? No bloody way. Especially if I had to go back without the wonders of Zyrtec, Nurofen, quinoa and Debbie’s quince paste.

Macro mania

A flower 'acquired' on my walk on Sunday — A flower ‘acquired’ on my walk on Sunday

My super-cheap macro lens attachment for my 18-55mm lens is my new best friend. I don’t love it more than my 50mm prime lens because I really really love my 50mm prime lens, but I am quite seriously enamoured with this macro lens attachment of mine.

I am loving this macro stuff so much I have started ‘acquiring’ flowers that hang over stranger’s fences into public space, just so that I can photograph them, seriously evaluating a potential bloom, looking for perfection so that any Lightroom 5 tweaking is kept to a minimum. If the bloom is bruised or damaged or has an unsightly spot it won’t pass muster. I am ruthless.

Then it’s all about the lighting. As I am a novice/amateur I don’t have a speedlight, or a softbox, or a backdrop, or any of the other paraphernalia that the big guys possess. I do have a small circular reflector, a large piece of black hessian and the sun. I do what I can with the little I have. And by working with what little I have at my disposal, I hope that I am using enough initiative and intuition to still take good photos and learn in the process.

And then doing this writing stuff while the Panadol is keeping the body aches at bay……………. You’re lucky to be getting a blog today. I’ve come down with some useless, non-identifiable cold/flu thing that is making me feel like crap.

So please enjoy the flowers. They have helped brighten my crappy, pyjama attired, sleepy, muscle aching, swollen glands day.

Nature's perfection and pattern — Nature’s perfection and pattern

Bugger. I missed it.

The only thing that put a damp rag on today was the fact that it was not terribly warm. Me no complain. It is only the fourth day of spring, and the weather is going to take time to improve. I can’t even complain about the fact that I worked for a few short hours this morning because I managed to achieve that wonderous feeling of completion. Those pesky ‘must do’ things that I ‘couldn’t do’ through lack of available free work time finally got done while I manned the reception desk. 🙂

So I tootled off to lunch feeling pretty good. Yes, I went out to lunch. A deliciously, decadent long lunch. A deliciously, decadent long lunch at a cafe with a beautiful, panoramic view of the Maribyrnong River. Certainly not a cheap lunch, but I won’t be eating dinner tonight.

And one of the highlights of this cafe, apart from the delightful vista, is where it is situated. In one of the best garden nurseries in Melbourne, Poynton’s. Here, the staff are incredibly helpful, the plants are in excellent condition and you can wander up to the cafe to enjoy breakfast, lunch or a lovely tea or coffee and cake when the urge takes you.

Poynton’s is always bursting with colour. It is a crazy photography person’s dream. I had to physically restrain myself from pulling the camera out of my bag the moment I arrived as I was expected in the cafe for lunch. I had to reason with myself and inwardly tell myself that the flowers would still be there after I had enjoyed lunch. I’m sure that my body was visibly twitching with frustration as I walked up to the cafe.

Sadly, there was one group of flowers that were not there when I left the nursery at nearly 4pm. Actually, that is not quite correct, they were there, they just were no longer blooming. Sun chasing flowers that had already closed for the day. They looked incredible when I arrived at 1:15pm, they were nondescript at 4pm.

Photographer’s regret. That missed opportunity.

So I have two choices. I can either make sure I allow myself extra time to get somewhere “just in case” I need to take photos, or I can spend the rest of my life apologising to people for running late because “I was on time but I had to stop and photograph a flower, a person, a building, a car, a something………………….”

Let’s be honest here. I’m never going to be so organised that I will allow extra time to be somewhere. So to my friends and family I extend my apologies now. If you love me you’ll accept the way things will be. I really am sorry. But I can’t stop it. This photography is my addiction. (Well, it’s one of my addictions)

It’s the little things in life…………….

Just a drop of water, but................wow. — Just a drop of water, but…………….wow.

Bigger is not always better. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. The diamond in the engagement ring perhaps. 🙂

But it’s when you take the time to get up close to the little things (like me) and examine them in detail that true magic and wonder can be witnessed.

I am having fun with my new macro lens attachment that I bought on the cheap via an internet offer. Just thought it was worth the few bucks to see if I liked macro photography and whether it was worth me investing in a real macro lens. I like it very much.

I do believe that a macro lens will be purchased by myself in the near future. I mean, really. If a cheap attachment can do this, can you just imagine what I could achieve with a real lens.

The love affair continues

I am still totally infatuated.

I simply cannot get enough.

The simplicity.

The elegance.

The purity.

The form.

The exquisite curves.

Beautiful and elegant no matter which way you look at it.