Asticou Azalea Garden in Acadia NP

Sometimes someone wants to show you something and as you are approaching it, you are underwhelmed.  OK, you tell yourself, I'll be polite and make the best of it.  And sometimes, just some times, it turns out to be time well-spent.

That's what happened to me at the Asticou Azalea Garden in Acadia National Park in Maine.

Annette was taking a photography workshop up there and the instructors invited me along on the garden photo shoot.

When we were pulling in to the parking lot there was only a little, 2' by 2' sign that indicated that anything was there.  If it weren't for the instructors, Annette and I would have never stopped in here.

The parking lot could hold less than a dozen cars.

Even the sign at the foot entrance to the garden was understated.

So I listen to the instructor.

• "Look for the fiddle head ferns."  
• "Try to shoot from the shadow side of the  flowers.  It will make them glow like they were lit with a light from within."  
• "If a large overall scene doe not work for you, look for the details."  
• "Simplify and isolate."

OK.  I'll give it  try.

I was very pleasantly surprised!  So surprised that after the workshop, Annette and I came back to the garden to get more images!

Fiddle Head Ferns

Simplified and Isolated

Look at the sun shining through the petals!

The instructor allowed me to borrow a close up filter to get really close!

Isolated Stepping Stones

Sand Garden Detail 

Birch Bark Details

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Kenilworth Aquatic Park Flowers

 On July 21, 2012, Annette and I found the time to go to the Lotus Blossom Festival at the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens.

It rained off and on during the drive down.  So much so that we wondered if this was going to be a wash out.  But we kept on going.

When we arrived it was lightly sprinkling.  We took our ponchos along just in case.

We arrived at 3:00 pm and it looked like most of the activities for the day had already left.  There were a couple of bands still left on the schedule and they both bravely trooped on, but their audience had all but disappeared.  Oh well, we didn't come for the activities, we came to see the flowers.

At first, I was a little discouraged by the rain.  Nobody likes to get wet when they are facing a two hour car ride home in wet clothes and every photographer wants to protect his gear (electronics and water do not mix!).

But I dutifully followed Annette into the gardens.  It turns out that it was worth the trip, in spite of the rain, or maybe because of the rain!

The wind from the storm had turned some of the more fully opened blossoms almost inside out!

Lotus Blossom feeling the effects of the Rainstorm

The huge bowl-shaped leaves of the Lotus plant caught and retained some of the water from the storm. I wondered how the plants put that water to good use.

I also liked how the shape of the leaf and the shape of the blossom mirror each other.

In the image below, it appears as if the pedals are wrapping themselves defensively around then core of the blossom, protecting it from the effects of the storm.

This new blossom appears to be coyly emerging from behind the leaves.

Besides the Lotus Plants there were many others, such as this blossom on a vine.

I was worried that the monochromatic, gray sky would be a problem, but in this picture,  it reduced the contrast (versus the bright, harsh sun in a nearly cloudless blue sky) such that you can actually see the reflection of the blossom rather than just a black shadow.

The rain also added some interest to this next Lilly pad image.  It is what was making the ripples in the water.

After an hour and a half, the drizzle turned into a shower.  You should have seen Annette!  She had on her poncho with the hood up and her camera, backpack on her back!  She also poked a hole in the poncho so that she could look through the viewfinder with the camera under the poncho.  She is one die hard photographer!

I guess I am not that dedicated to my craft.  I thought that when the rain came, it was a good time to look at the displays inside of the park office building!

Talk to you next time.  Keep on Clicking!

Flowers Past Their Prime

In the last post I mentioned that Annette and I went to Canoe Creek State Park and saw the ruins of the Limekilns.

While we were there we also saw many flowers.  Unfortunately, they were past their prime.  Annette and  I agreed that we should have been there a week or two earlier.  Oh, well.  Life sometimes gets in the way!

Anyway, we were there and we tried to make the best of it.  Here are some flower pictures.  They are not great, but it forms a baseline.  Let's see if I can improve!

Where's my other petal?

Does anyone know what this white flower and the next purple flower are?

 

Violets?

Jumbled Ferns

Look at the center swirl around!

A Weed, but I liked it.

Are these bugs mating?????

Flowers and Aperture

Take a look at these two pictures.  Not because they are great.  They are not.  But because there is a lesson in aperture in these pictures.

As I was trying to capture the beauty of this field of clover, I was trying several techniques.  One technique is to use the aperture setting to control the depth of field in the image.  You can see it quite obviously in these two image.

It was evening, right around sunset, so there was not enough light to handhold the camera at f/22.  So I had it on a tripod.  These two pictures were taken without moving the camera.

The major difference is the aperture setting.

The first image obviously was shot at a very small aperture (actually it was f/22).  There is a lot of detail from front to back in the image.

The second image was shot at a much larger aperture.  The depth of field is much smaller.

Which one is better?  That's not the question!  Which one suits your purpose?  That is the question!

Field of Clover

Annette and I have driven past a field of clover a couple of times.  It was so beautiful that we finally went back with our cameras.  It's one of those places that have a beauty that attracts you, but once you are there with your camera, you can never quite capture the beauty that you see.

But we tried!  Oh, yeah, we tried a couple of times this week.  Pretty soon the clover "flowers" will be past their prime.  But we failed to capture the beauty for a couple of reasons.

#1 is that we never were there for the right light.  The first time we got there the light was good but it was only 15 minutes before the sun went behind the horizon.  The second time, we went earlier.  The light was good be we were there for only 5 minutes before the sun went behind some clouds and never came back out.

#2 reason is that the beauty is so chaotic.  From a distance the field looks like it is covered in a layer of red.  However, from up close there is just too much detail.  Yes, I know we can use depth of field to control some of the detail.  Yes, I know you must isolate your subject.  But it just wasn't working for us, well at least for me.  Maybe Annette has great images, I don't know.

 This first image is what attracted me to the field.  It was just a beautiful sea of red clover.  At least it was when I was going 55 mph!

This second picture is my attempt to simplify and isolate a portion of the field.

We will have to keep going back until we get some "keeper" images!  I hope the clovers last that long!