23 Jul 13. On our last stop at the lavender farms I wandered away from the rows of lavender to a small pond at one end of the farm. in one corner was a group of perhaps 20 lily pads and four or so blooms. None were situated so as to provide for a clean shot, so I did my best to minimize the number of green stalks protruding upward across the flowers and then cropped the resulting images to get rid of as much of them as I could. That resulted in some small loss of flower, but I felt the loss was acceptable and it got rid of the annoying stalks.A very straight image for B&W Tuesday with the exception of the print-like border. This started obviously as a color image but I applied a B&W filter to get the result you are seeing. I'll likely share the full color version on another day; note the visitors on the flower. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1250 sec @ f / 9.
24 Jul 13. One of our, or at least my, favorite lavender farms has several patches of poppies that I really like to shoot. Each year this farm has offered different opportunities for shooting these brilliant red flowers sitting atop large green stalks, but this year was an exception. Instead of red flowers waving in the occasional breeze, there was group after group of seed-heads siting atop brown to green stalks bouncing about in the steady wind, sometime gusting to above 25 knots. Since all the flowers were gone, and just the seedpods remained, I decided to inquire as to the possibility of purchasing some seeds for our garden. I was politely informed that since these were the real opium poppies, and as they had been planted there by the birds, and not the farming family, the govt was kindly letting them keep them to brighten up the farm but that they were not allowed to sell or propagate them in any way. In fact, were it not for the fact that the birds had planted them, the govt wouldn't have allowed them to keep them. So sorry, they couldn't sell me any. So I said thanks, "guess I'll just have to make like a bird." That said, I found my way back to where the poppies were standing and, making like a bird, plucked a few seed pods. When we got home I emptied them out getting perhaps 1000+ seeds for our garden. Now it simply remains to see how well they grow. Then next year we can all have a great time rolling our own. I've cropped the original significantly, selectively masked and blurred the background, and enhanced the texture on selected stalks and seedpods to achieve this look. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/1000 sec @ f / 8.
25 Jul 13. As part of our Lavender Festival exercise we concluded our day with a drive up to Deer Park. Having been told that it was a lovely sight to see, and that there were large numbers of deer to see and even feed from your hand, we thought it would be the fitting end to the day. Little did we realize at the start of the drive that the final portion of the approach would be 8 miles of very bad and twisty road. When we finally got to the top we located a single deer, who refused to even turn around and look at us, and some very limited, but majestic nonetheless scenery. During an earlier portion of the drive we had seen13 deer reasonably close up, so this one critter didn't make up for the long drive. As difficult as the drive up was, it was nothing in comparison to the downhill return portion which we did with a horribly dusty windscreen and and evening sunlight glaring off it. I had to stop the vehicle several times as the glare completely blinded my vision and I had no idea where I was on that 1.5 lane road. Had we not had the cherubs, I do believe I would have stopped several other times to shoot the absolutely beautiful back lit alpine flowers, but with them in the car I wasn't comfortable so doing. Just prior to starting our return portion of the trip Jan spotted a clump of Sitka valeriana which appeared as though being highlighted by Super Troupers so intense was the back lighting. I took several shots but didn't really like what I got well enough to share straight from the camera, so I manipulated my favorite of the set and converted it to a water color which I do like quite a lot. So, to achieve what I have, I cropped the original to isolate just one triad of the flowers, added a small amount of detail enhancement, and and adjusted the overall contrast to recover a small amount of detail in the strongest portions of the back lit stalks. That was then converted to get the water color look. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 9.
