There is a little park between our local senior center and outdoor community pool [1] with assorted roses, columbines and like; as with so many local gardens, milkweed is being allowed to incorporate itself; and some truly spectacular bearded iris.
Mostly I just upped the saturation a touch on this one to match the one immediately following, which actually I took first. /S4/2016S4/20160729S4/20160602_202404adj.jpg
So many things have been cancelled, but these beautiful bi-coloured irises come back year after year, and so I have continued to enjoy them. By 2016, I was ‘sophisticated’ enough to happily shoot stems in various stages of decay as well as perfect blooms only. They are most likely the mid-1980s Edith Wolford cultivar, or its lineage.
Cropped only. ISO 50, f2.2 1/148sec EV0. /S4/2016S4/20160729S4 Those clever folks who wrote the processing software did a great job for this image, anyway:)
For this I have f2tE to thank, who in the skewed time of the pandemic explained how much she enjoyed watching the flowers open over the course of hours. This directly inspired me to take the picture below:
2Jun2020; 100ISO, 1/241s, f1.7 Out of the box. /OnePlus/2020T/20200602T/IMG_20200602_085530.jpg
Normally in early June I'd be riding out to photograph (& sometimes paint) at the Peony Garden which celebrated reached its centennial this year[2] ; but by the time it was peaking, people were being requested to stay away[3] I stuck closer to home. I did try to paint these beautiful, complexly ruffled flowers en plein air, but gave up in despair.
Interestingly, while pulling pix for this page I found the new camera was much more prone to clipping highlights. Ofc, now that I have manual overrides I can compensate for that—I think they optimize phone cameras to work in low light, which is often the situation for snaps of friends, evidently the most common use for such devices—but really, I've noticed all my RAWs tend to look rather overexposed. If it were me optimizing the defaults, I'd dial down the exposure a notch, because I seem to forever be reducing it manually.
[1]the latter of which, sadly, is closed this year—particularly painful because the folks running it had just completed a successful campaign to raise funds to do some desperately needed infrastructure repairs on the bath house.)
[2]Yet another loss to COVID
[3]Evidently too many people found following simple directions to keep 6’ apart & wear masks was too damn difficult failed to social distance....certainly I was one of the few people wearing masks during the earliest part of the season, & I gave up on it, more because of the unmasked people on the bike path getting to & from than, strictly speaking, the garden. But may I mention my frustration at some Karen thanking me for wearing a mask while strolling around without even one pulled down on her neck? That's chutzpah for you.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
