The Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D was introduced in late 2004, a product of Minolta’s merger with Konica the previous year. It came with a 6.1 MP CCD sensor, which accounts for its rich color reproduction. Its design borrowed significantly from that of the Maxxum 7, introduced in 2000. ProductionContinue Reading
For years, I have been battling the elements in two small patches of land between the front sidewalk and the street. At one point, variegated liriope lived there, but it allowed too many weeds to grow. Since 2020, various combinations of angelonia, verbena, ice plant, and other plants haveContinue Reading
Description: Gardenia in low sunlight Background: Using exposure compensation was one of the trickiest things for me to apply properly with film because of the lag between shooting and viewing the result. Accounting for backlighting was easy, and backlit frames usually turned out as hoped. But flowers proved to beContinue Reading
“The world is a carousel of color!” As a child, I watched Disney’s Wonderful World of Color TV show most Sunday nights. Tinker Bell would wave her wand and splash gobs of color paint on the screen, but they were shades of gray on my screen. Our first color TV wasContinue Reading
It has taken three years—THREE YEARS! After waiting, not so patiently, for three years, I finally managed to get a shot of a goldfinch munching away on coneflowers seeds. Goldfinches are tiny birds, maybe three inches from beak to tail. They are also very skittish. Sometimes they come inContinue Reading
Every winter, I look back over flower season to rue mistakes and cheer successes. This year has been a mixture of both. Since 2014, the first season, I have documented the garden—first with an iPhone 4s, and now with an iPhone 8 and Minolta Maxxum 7D. Documenting is a separateContinue Reading
Undoubtedly, this sounds like a stupid question. The question struck me as somewhat foolish as well, since I had just spent three hours yanking weeds. But, the thing is, some of those weeds I kind of liked. After thinking about this question for a day or so, I looked upContinue Reading
Phloxes are great garden flowers. They have beautiful blooms and smell as if they could be an ingredient in Sweet & Sour Tarts. I have had good luck growing regular garden phlox and creeping phlox, but I’ve planted dwarf phlox multiple times, and it has never made it past aContinue Reading
At the end of the first season of the garden, when the frost hit and everything died, I felt such a sense of loss. Browns replaced greens, indigos, pinks, yellows, and lavenders. Gray skies joined the brown and muted the landscape. Sunny days only made the loss more noticeable. ButContinue Reading
I have always given credit to impressionist painters for the juxtaposition of colors in my garden. Purple shades are next to yellow hues, and red crocosmia flutes are surrounded by greens. The bellflowers, the closest to being blue, are next to purples, and the only orange blooms have a yellowContinue Reading
