Cut glads vs a cat

The glads got a bit of a late start this year, so some were still coming into bloom when we got that cold snap. Linda cut some of them to see if they would bloom (they didn't), and to keep some colour for us. I tried a bunch of different photos of them in different light, mainly trying to bring up the texture and delicate colour.

This pink was particularly difficult. Lightroom kept trying to make it garish.

I wanted to get the flowers under white light, and picked the reading light up front. You can imagine my astonishment at the yellow. White LED light yes, but pale yellow walls and an orange cat right there, sniffing the flowers. Plus the ISO is high so I had to do some tweaks to bring down the noise without losing the texture of the leaves or his fur. Even playing with the white balance didn't change it for the better in any significant way. Sort of an interesting quality to the photos, what do you think?

If you need to be reminded of what the dahlias and glads looked like before fall arrived, go here. Here's what the last dahlia looks like now. I'd asked Linda not to chop it down till I got a photo of it.

There are a few rose blooms withering away. The photos I took didn't come out the way I wanted, so I'll have another go. I think they'll be around a while. Some of my long time readers will remember last winters rose buds. Nothing like that this year, I think, but I'll keep my eye out. There a few pansies, and some little poppies hanging in, but that's about it.

Every now and then I get books out of the library on photography. I was so disappointed when I got home and opened Behind the Camera, Creative Techniques of 100 Photographers, by Paul Lowe. What is the point of a showing a photograph and discussing it, when you spread the photo over two pages when the spine doesn't go flat? That makes it impossible to actually look at the photo in any serious way. When I casually browsed it, I only saw photos on one page. Fail. Next. Glad I didn't buy it.

As a digression, why do we pronounce it pho-TOG-raphy? The root is actually two words, from the Greek, φωτός (phōtos), genitive of φῶς (phōs), "light" and γραφή (graphé) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light". Really, I suppose we should  be saying 'photo-graphy.'

In any case I've been musing about the whole drawing with light thing, and starting to think about photos as a more abstract art instead of a beautiful representation of a scene. One of the other books was really good on that topic. Stay tuned.

Today was the first run this fall wearing tights and a jacket. My feet and legs felt really good until just near the end. I was happy to call it at 6K, 42:22, or 7:03/K really consistently, mostly breathing easy for what would be a chatchatchat pace, except for going uphill. Let's see what my shoulders think of a swim tomorrow.