Orchids are one of my favourite flowers. They always look so delicate, yet I think that they, like some people, have an underlying strength.
I was playing around with trying to photograph droplets on the petals. My efforts were not very successful, but they did not detract from the exotic beauty of the flowers.
Look at this purple beauty…
Monochrome edits…
The last one is my favourite. There is a calm and peaceful appeal about it.
The aloe flowers in our garden are dying off. It is sad to see their glorious colour fading. However, I took note of them the other day and was intrigued by the way they are drying out. Nature is not always boring when all seems dull and brown.
I love playing with B&W edits. I added a black and white gradient and then a vanilla overlay…
Nine days into January and this is the first time I have posted in the new year. If I don’t look out, I might do worse than last year in the number of times I put something on my blog!
One thing I have done is to choose a new theme for my blog. New Year….new theme.
Life is slowly getting back to normal and is certainly a lot quieter after there being ten of us in the house over the holiday period. My children have all left to go back to their various homes and work. Exciting times are ahead of us this year, as we await the arrival of two grandchildren. Have I mentioned it before? Both my daughter and daughter-in-law are expecting their first children. Of course, on our part, that requires a trip to the UK to meet the babies when they arrive. Mmmm…I wonder if I can bear to make the trip there??? Ha ha! Of course I can! Any excuse to go to the UK 🙂 I must say that I think they are very considerate in being due in May…late spring/early summer!
I have lots to do before going over there…I have two quilts to make, amongst other things. At the moment, I have not decided on what patterns etc to do for the quilts. Once I have done so, I should probably record the process here on my blog. In my previous post, I was saying that I had not decided what to do with my blog this year…maybe the quilts could the subject for a couple of posts.
Just before my 3rd son left, he found this butterfly in the garden. We weren’t sure if it had been injured or was battling in the strong winds, as it was not moving much and did not seem very energetic. However, it did make it easy to photograph. It had the most beautiful markings.
I am also linking up to Lori’s Mandarin Orange Monday…
For this final photograph I added an orange overlay, after all it is Mandarin Orange Monday 😉
The other day I saw this cute little frog nestled comfortably in the leaf of an aloe plant in our garden. I ran into the house, got my camera, macro lens, tripod and took a couple of pictures. It had been raining and my tripod got rather muddy in the process! All in a good cause though 🙂
I am linking up to Lisa’s Macro Monday
Painted reed frog…
I simply cannot believe that a week has gone by since I last put a post on my blog…what happens to the time???
Realising that it was Monday and, therefore, time for Macro Monday and Mandarin Orange Monday, I got out my camera this afternoon and took some photos of this flower. Being a fount of knowledge on the names of flowers (not!) I think this is a gerbera daisy. I am open to correction 🙂
For some reason I battled to get a crisp shot, but I thought the orange tones in this would be an appropriate entry for Mandarin Orange Monday…
Then I decided to look at the underside of the flower. It makes me feel like I am in one of those “Honey, I Shrunk The…” movies and I am standing under a huge plant. Definitely appropriate for Macro Monday…
Somewhere in my blog wanderings I saw a prompt to take a photo of a spoon and now I cannot remember which site I saw it on…oops!
Anyway, I decided to try out some macro shots of spoons. It was very amusing, as I I kept seeing my reflection in the spoon, so I set the camera to a 2 second delay and got out of the way! You can still see a reflection of the camera…too funny!
This is my entry for Lisa’s Macro Monday challenge…
It has been ages since I took part in any photographic challenges, so decided to put that right and take part in Lisa’s Monday Macro challenge.
It is the first time that I have taken part in her challenge and I hope it won’t be the last!
The photo below is a protea and I think it is called a Red Pincushion Protea. This one is sitting in a bouquet of flowers that I have in the house at the moment. Proteas are generally lovely flowers to have in a bouquet, as they last very well.
The detail of the tiny hairs in this photo fascinate me…
P.S. I am submitting this photo to Mandarin Orange Monday too…even though it is Wednesday already 😉 Thank you LoriK for inviting me to  enter this photo.
I did not really do too much editing. I have forgotten exactly what I did, but my first edits were in Lightroom, changing the tone and enhancing the colour. Then I sharpened the picture in Photoshop CS5.
Last weekend we had some friends around for a meal and Anita brought me a beautiful bunch of flowers. They have been sitting on my dining table and bringing me much pleasure all week.
Now that I am settling into my new home I am finding my inspiration for photography and other creative pursuits returning to me – yeah! Today I decided to get my macro lens out and take some pics of the flowers.
Here they are…
Today is a miserable, rainy, gloomy day. Happily, I have not had to venture out and cope with driving in the rain or going to the shops, especially as the parking lots and shops are crowded and crazy!
My daughter has  a lovely candle holder, so in the cause of taking a photo, I put a tea light inside and captured this shot…a lovely warm glow to brighten up a gloomy day 🙂
Being Christmas time, this photo also brings to mind the Light of the world – John 8:12.
I am linking up to Laura’s Macro FridayÂ
I have not done any macro photography in months and I felt like a beginner again when I took the lens out this morning.
In searching around for something to photograph my eyes lit upon the corsage that I wore at my daughter’s wedding in September. Of course it is all dried up now, but I thought it made an interesting photo for Laura’s weekly challenge over at Blogging From Bolivia
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