Welcome Back! (Belated)

Every spring, I try to get fresh images of the first blooms. Usually, this happens in early April, and this year was no different. The woodland phlox kicked things off and was soon followed by the Catmint and Gerber daisies. The azaleas, usually loaded with blooms, were more subdued this year because of the very bad frost, with temperatures down to 11 degrees.

Many plants did not make it back, with the society garlic taking the worst hit, along with magenta and lavender verbena. The gardenia still looked pretty bad when I took these shots the first week of April.

I intended to post these images within a few days of taking them. But, alas, they sat undeveloped until the last week in June. But better late than never, right?

Azalea, 100mm f2.8 macro, +2 Close-up Filter, Fuji 100, Minolta 700si
Azalea, 100mm f2.8 macro, Fuji 100, Minolta 700si
Catmint, 100mm f2.8 macro, +2 Close-up Filter, Fuji 100, Minolta 700si
Woodland Phlox100mm f2.8 macro, Fuji 100, Minolta 700si

I’ve noticed something (actually, a few things) about capturing yellow flowers. Like red ones, shooting them in bright light rarely works well. Avoiding the loss of detail requires shooting them in indirect sunlight or using exposure comp. Here, I decided to give Fuji 100 a chance, and the image has the usual problems with loss of detail. The daisy was a yellow blob. As seen here, I’ve turned down the image’s luminance quite a bit.

The catmint image was an experiment using the 100mm f2.8 macro lens and a +2 close-up filter. The DoF was more shallow than expected, with only the middle of the stem in focus. The sunlight seems to have no effect on the woodland phlox.

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