Tag: Flowers

Black & White Glow

This rose is surprisingly hard to photograph because it so rarely ever comes out looking like it does in real life. Part of this is because of the lighter, near white core and the deep, dark, vivid pinkish red outer petals. The stark contrast between the two often blows out the white and makes the pink do weird things in photograph form.

It does make for some amazing transitions to black and white because of that natural high contrast. I don’t have to work too hard to push it to emphasize that contrast, especially when the flowers start to get speckled like they tend to do.

This one is still pretty solid in color (no speckles), but as soon as I turned it to black and white, it looked like it was glowing from within, giving it almost a photo negative kind of quality.

For a tiny, miniature rose, this one packs a wallop of personality.

Cold, Rainy, And Dreary

I could really do without this nasty cold snap. Pretty sure this entire week is breaking records on the low temps. Mother Nature really doesn’t need to take those records as challenges to break them. She definitely doesn’t need to work so hard to break so many at once. It really isn’t helping me stay out of cranky pants mode.

Between the cold, the rain and the general time of year, I’m struggling to find good photo subjects or the motivation to go find them.

Black & White Daylily Stamen

Yesterday was probably the most bizarre first day of school I’ve ever seen. It was weird enough having BG at home, but the weather felt like a cold Halloween night, making everything feel completely out of sync.

We shattered previous records by something like 10 degrees. No, 56 isn’t exactly cold, but for a high temp during the first part of September and the day after hitting near 90, it felt frigid. I threatened to turn the heat on last night (didn’t, but came damn close.) I don’t know that I’ve ever turned the heat on this close to the beginning of September. The very end of the month, maybe, but not anywhere near the beginning.

Today isn’t going to be any warmer and it is rainy and dreary on top of it. That isn’t very conducive to motivating me to do anything other than snuggle down with a book and a pot of coffee.

Daylily Seed Pod

Where all my pretty flowers once were, now I have these. They aren’t pretty like the flowers were, but they are full of interesting textures and shapes. I once had a college art class that used a much larger version of something like this as a prop for a drawing assignment that focused on shading in ink. At the time, I wasn’t thrilled with the subject, but I LOVED the finished piece. One of my early lessons in paying attention to the little things and seeing beauty in unusual places.