FLORAL PICTURES

I have to say that of all my subject photos, floral pictures are my favorite. Let’s face it, the flower isn’t going to fly away just as you click the shutter! My cats just get bored and walk away! And it seems that scenic pictures can come out good sometimes, but they have to be pretty special. But floral pictures? It’s hard to go completely wrong!

Flowers stand still………unless of course it’s windy. Then it’s just a matter of timing. If it’s windy, it’s usually best to go with just regular close-ups instead of macros for floral pictures. In that case, choose a nice bunch of flowers rather than going for the individual. Masses of flowers make beautiful floral pictures!

I have to admit, my favorite floral pictures come from using the macro function on my camera. I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 with a 12 times optical zoom plus an available 4 times digital zoom. I love this little camera! It allows me to take pictures so close you can see the hairs on the pistil! Or I can zoom in just enough to totally fill the screen with flowers. I usually like to try to get a good floral picture by using just the optical zoom though. This generally lends itself to working with the photo in PhotoShop later on.

I work on and add to my gardens every year. So beginning each spring, I have new subjects to photograph throughout the growing season. Add these to my die-hard favorites, and each year new, unusual or in some cases, perfected floral photos are added to my repertoire.

The natural perfection of flowers are hard to beat when choosing a subject. With nature being the real artist here, all you have to do is focus and shoot!

Echinacea

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And Butterflies Too!

Since the first plant that I placed in my meager garden, I've loved that breathless moment when a butterfly flits in and checks out my offering. That first plant that attracted them was a purple coneflower. Since then, I've discovered several others that never fail to bring in the floating dreams.

My biggest surprise was the Gulf Fritillary that is attracted to none other than our native growing vine, the passion flower. I learned that this beauty is exclusively dependent on the passion vine for the feeding of its caterpillar. So needless to say, I quickly set up a couple of "fritillary feeding stations" in my gardens.

One plant that I stumbled upon last season was what the seed packet called, "Mexican Sunflowers". They turned out to be four foot tall and strong enough to stay upright in the worst weather. They were a beautiful brilliant orange with a yellow center. And I never saw so many different types of butterflies on one group of flowers!! It was a mind-blowing show, day after day. Butterflies of all kinds covered this plant from sunup to sundown. Unfortunately, it is an annual, so I have to plant it again this year. But it's well worth it for the ensuing show!