Celina. And more flowers

Celina is quite a pretty cat, but she's a harder photograph than Curtis. She blends in to more of the backgrounds, and unless she's asleep, doesn't really sit still for me. But here you are anyways. It's only after I edited the photo that I noticed the giant thumb.

Lots of photos of the garden of course. I was thinking, after taking the photos of course, that I should have misted them with a bit of water, and then taken the photo. Maybe next time. Live and learn. Stay tuned.

Ants on the peonies are pretty reliable, and they hold still. I've been reading up on extension tubes to get more magnification. One day soon you'll see me out there the tripod, giving the peonies the giant photographic eyeball, using them as background in order to capture ants. If anyone wants in on the ant-ly action, let me know and I'll make lots of coffee.

One of my buddies is almost obsessed with photos of a flower blossom backlit by the sun, showing the delicate tracery of flower blossom stuff. The top of this tulip is strongly lit by the evening sun, and the bottom was in shade. The whole thing glowed like hot glass fresh from the kiln. Not overexposed or oversaturated, just a beautiful strong orange. I wanted to see if I could get that same effect to show up in a photo. I think this gets a passing grade, but still needs work.

This is one of the shots that happened without thinking. I was on my way somewhere else when I looked down, and loved the almost metallic sheet of the purple, and the twisted blossom shape. Click. Next. The trick was to edit to keep that shade, and not overdo it.

With the abstracts, it's not only easy, it's desirable to push the colour, push the sharpening, push everything. Nobody knows what it really is, so they can't say that looks wrong. All they can do is react to the colours, lines, shapes, and feel what the image says.

Flowers are a little tougher. There's the delicate nature of the leaves or blossoms. Plus most of us know what an orange tulip, or a red rose, or a yellow daffodil looks like, and if you push the photo too far it won't look real. It's easy to tweak it to turn a red to orange or vice versa, and much of the time nobody would know. Depending on the plant and variety, both could be natural colours.

Speaking earlier of unnatural colours, here's one of my recent abstracts.