Everyone takes pictures of flowers. I usually try to take a different kind of flower photo... I try to view the flower from a different angle, or emphasize a part of the flower that usually goes unnoticed. I'm not sure how successful I am, or if other people appreciate this kind of photo. Nonetheless, here is one of my favorites from yesterday.

I got home from work at about 8am yesterday and took advantage of some of the best light I have seen all summer. When I uploaded the photos, I was disappointed in all of them. Today I must be in a less critical mood because I managed to identify 5 or 6 good ones. I'll post more in the coming days. This hosta leaf is about all my poor laptop can handle tonight.

When I visited Costa Rica, I kept trying to take photos of giant red leaves illuminated by the morning sun. the result was the same every time - completely washed out with blown highlights. This time I finally managed to get it right.

I've been thinking about this photo since I took it a couple of weeks ago. Only tonight was I actually able to locate it in my archive. I was starting to wonder if I had maybe just dreamt about taking it. The original version had a very dreamy, washed-out look - kind of like staring out the window of a bus, watching the scenery whip by in a blur while thinking about other things. At first, I modified the photo to make it very vibrant and contrasty. It looked like a completely different photo, but both had their merits. I debated for a long time over which version I liked better: dreamy and surreal vs. bright and contrasty. In the end, I settled for this (highly experimental) monochrome version.

I may post the other two versions of this photo later. My poor laptop has had just about all of the photo processing it can take for one night.

This is Rudbeckia (or Brown-Eyed Susan). I admit that I cheated and bought a few for our yard, even though I had vowed not to get any more plants. I was looking them up on the internet, and found a site that referred to the leaves as "hairy, itchy, and generally not one of this plant's best features". I disagree. The soft leaves and petals are what makes this such a fun and interesting flower to photograph.

It has rained almost every day since I moved to Ottawa. I don't really mind. I like rain, and rainy weather makes me feel better about being stuck inside studying in all of my spare time. Colors always look more vibrant after it rains, and there was an evening last week when the sun came out for a few minutes between cloudbursts. I managed to get some flower photos in very good light.

I like photos of flowers with water droplets on the petals. I know that anyone can stage these shots by spraying the flowers with water... To me it seems kind of fake. It's more exciting to capture the real thing -- flowers still dripping after a summer evening rain shower.

This photo was taken before I left Saskatoon. I wanted to line the vertical stems of the lilies up with the vertical lines of the fence. Graem commented that it must have taken a long time to line up this shot, but it didn't really. The hardest part was ensuring that the fence would be slightly blurred in the background, but not so much as to be obliterated. I probably should have taken a few shots to make sure of this, but I only took one. I guessed and got lucky.

Last night I stuck my nose into one of my roses and went to give it a big sniff. I jumped back a bit when I noticed three beetles in the centre of the rose. I examined the other flowers, and noticed that most of the roses had at least one beetle in the centre. Of course, I ran inside to get the camera. I took a few photos of the beetles in the roses, but most didn't turn out. To avoid stepping on the other flowers in the flowerbed, I had to stand on my tiptoes and lean out over the flowers. I couldn't actually see through the viewfinder to frame my shots.

Stepping back, I noticed that the beetles were not confined to the roses... They were pretty much attached to every other kind of flower in the bed. I managed to get a good shot or two, including this one.

These beetles are quite interesting with their iridescent color, white tufts of "fur" on their sides, and little hooks on their legs. This is another type of bug that I have never seen in western Canada. Unfortunately it's also a hungry bug. I suspect that these beetles are responsible for the chewed condition of most of my flowers.

Update: A helpful reader supplied that this is a Japanese Beetle, and that certainly appears to be the case. These beetles are well known for their destructive tendencies.

If I had my way, I would have a massive greenhouse/garden/orchard/pond with a variety of plants and trees. I would have no obligations in life other than caring for my garden (and, of course, taking the occasional picture). Unfortunately, I don't have my way. I love plants, but have very little time for them. I'm always acquiring more plants than I can look after properly; then I'm fated to watch them suffer from lack of water, food, space or attention. I also form emotional attachments to plants and trees. Not a day goes by when I don't miss the elm, willow, pear trees, cherry tree, Norfolk pine, poppies, etc. that I left behind in SK.

Knowing all of this, I decided to only bring a couple of my favorite houseplants to Ottawa. This living situation is temporary, so I vowed not to acquire any new plants for the yard. This vow lasted all of 30 seconds once I got near a garden centre.

These are mallow flowers. When I bought the plant, it had a plethora of geometrically interesting buds. I thought it would be fun to follow the evolution of these buds with my camera. I didn't really have a chance... These buds open fast. The buds evolve into saucer-sized flowers, literally overnight. The flowers remind me of the hibiscus I saw in Costa Rica. I haven't seen flowers like this in Canada before.

Unfortunately, the mallow fell victim to a storm with violent wind and rain. The plant is still alive, but the stalk with all of the flowers and buds was snapped right off and didn't rejuvenate or grow roots when I put it in a glass of water.

Clematis is one of my favorite flowers. I tried unsuccessfully to grow it in Saskatoon. I have some nice clematis in my new backyard, but unfortunately, they seem to get eaten right away by some kind of insect that targets flowers rather than leaves. In this photo, the light was shining right through the petals of the clematis, making the flower almost glow in the late afternoon light.

This photo was taken in June 2008 with my point-and-shoot. I remember the day very clearly. Graem had decided that we needed to measure the perimeter of our house. I don't remember what project this was for, but it was something that had to be done immediately and couldn't wait. I was standing there for an interminable amount of time holding the end of the tape measure. It was about 8pm, and light was rapidly fading from the sky. The whole time, I was looking at our caraganas and thinking that I must photograph them. It also seemed like something that had to be done immediately.

As soon as the measuring was done, I grabbed the camera. I wasn't hoping for too much given the lighting conditions. I know the photo isn't perfect - I must have been using the "super macro with LED" function on my camera as there is reflection from the flower petals and the leaves have an unnatural green glow. Nonetheless, I was quite pleased with the results. In fact, I ended up having a print made of this photo to hang on my wall. I had never really taken notice of caragana flowers before.

I debated long and hard about removing this photo from Red Bubble. It had the least views of any of my photos currently on the site, but it is the first Red Bubble reject that had been favorited by someone. I know that some people are quite liberal with their photo 'favoriting', but it still seemed kind of mean to remove someone's 'favorite' photo. I ended up removing the photo... After all, as I become a better photographer, and as I become more well-known on the site, a higher proportion of my photos will probably be 'favorited'. If I leave them all on Red Bubble forever, I risk ending up with one of those 200-page profiles I am trying to avoid.

This photo was teetering on the brink of Red Bubble elimination even before I left Saskatoon. I decided that I would try to take a better photo of the caraganas with my DSLR and macro lens to replace it. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to it the caraganas had finished blooming.

Spring and summer are far too transient. Right now, I am especially goaded by the fact that it is summer and I'm in an exciting new city, but I'm always either stuck at work or at my desk studying for exams. There isn't nearly enough time for photography or enjoying life in general.

I seem to be taking a lot of pictures of flies. I have even more in the queue that haven't been posted yet. Mostly it's because flies seem to be everywhere these days. To be honest, I often view photographing flies as a form of "practice" for when a more interesting insect comes along. That's kind of an unfair way of thinking, though... flies are interesting creatures in their own right.

In this photo, it's not so much the fly that is interesting, but the fact that it's standing right on the edge of the serrated leaf.

Here are some orange flower buds to brighten up a dreary day.

This is the latest Red Bubble Reject. It was taken in winter 2009, on the first real photo journey I took with my new camera. We went out into the country and photographed some abandoned old farmhouses.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much when I took this shot. I certainly didn't plan the shot or have any sort of composition in mind. I had never peered through the window of an abandoned house before, and it seemed kind of taboo. The inside of the house was also very dark. One of my main reasons for choosing a Nikon D700 was its reputation as the best DSLR on the market for low-light photography. I always seemed to be crouching in the ditch photographing wildflowers at dusk with my point-and-shoot and a close to 0% success rate. I was eager to try out the low light performance of my new camera, but I didn't actually think I'd come out with a useable photo. I was pleasantly surprised! I like the look of the peeling wallpaper and paint, and the snow (with little mouse footprints) on the ground. Despite the lack of planning for this shot, it placed quite high in an online photo competition I entered (32nd place from more than 400 entries).

I find it both comforting and unnerving to look at a photo like this. It's a reminder that all of the things we treasure right now, all of the things our lives revolve around, all of the things that cause anguish and stress... they all end up like this, someday.

Ants like peonies. When I was about three, my mom told me that ants would help the peonies bloom. whenever I saw an ant in our yard, I'd pick it up and dutifully deposit it near our peony plant. That peony never did very well, and the ants never stuck around (or maybe they just didn't survive being pinched between my clumsy toddler fingers). An internet search reveals that it is probably a myth that ants promote peony blossoms. The ants like the sweet nectar exuded by the flower buds... They may or may not benefit the plant by eating smaller insect predators or enriching the nearby soil with their colonies.

This photo was taken on my last evening in Saskatoon, where the peonies were always swarming with ants. I left Saskatoon before our peonies bloomed, and arrived in Ottawa right after theirs had finished.

I usually try to only post my best photos. This is an exception. I know that this photo is not technically very good, yet it was one of those pictures I felt absolutely compelled to take. It was taken as we were walking home from the river. I like the bifurcation of the path and the group of maple trees in the middle. I also like the Canadian flag on the building. The clouds were quite dark and ominous in real life, and this added to the mood.

This photo suffers from the same problem as many of my landscape photos and ocean sunsets - highlights in the sky are blown out, and the foreground is too dark. This was quite noticeable in the original. I fixed it a bit in post-processing, but the result was (unfortunately) a fairly flat photo. I hope to someday get a polarizing filter and maybe a neutral density gradient filter to prevent this problem.

In Saskatoon, my house was steps away from the river. I'm fairly close to the river in Ottawa too, only now "close" means about 5km. Last weekend Graem and I endeavoured to walk there. On the way, we stumbled into a botanical garden. This is where we found almost every kind of columbine imaginable. Columbines are among my favorite flowers. I was disappointed that I only had the 50mm lens and the wide angle with me, but I still managed to get a few shots. If it wasn't such a long walk, and if I wasn't lazy, I would have gone back home for the macro lens.

I had a dream a few months ago where I was taking photos with a tilt-shift lens in a field of red tulips. Ever since then, I've been eager to take (or attempt) such a shot. Graem says we'll have to go to Holland one day for me to do that. I don't have a tilt-shift lens, and the tulips are finished blooming. I do, however, have a lensbaby, and there is a nice patch of foxgloves at the garden that might allow for improvisation.

I should be studying for my exams right now, but it will take a lot of willpower to keep me away from the botanical garden on my next sunny day off!

There were several of these little red bugs in my front yard today. I'm not sure what kind of bug this is. I don't think we had them in western Canada, as I have never seen them before. Whatever kind of bug this is, they seem quite destructive. Every flower or leaf they were attached to was fairly chewed up.

This photo is another Red Bubble reject taken at about 5am on August 4, 2008 when I went for a walk with the camera before going to bed. I like the still water and the reflection of the clouds and blue sky. I like the quality of the light, and the fact that the train bridge can just barely be seen in the background. Morning light is kind of a novelty for me, since I am such a night person. If I'm seeing morning light, I'm usually racing to work, late, with my nose buried in my coffee and my brain preoccupied with other things. It's rare to have a morning off and be awake to enjoy it.

A couple of weeks ago, I took the wide angle lens down to the river and tried to capture a similar shot. The colors were maybe a bit better, but none of the photos really captured the same mood. I have thousands of dollars worth of photography equipment that I didn't have a year ago, but sometimes just getting the right moment is the most important thing.

This is a giant elm tree that was in my backyard in Saskatoon. I've known for a while now that I wanted to photograph the elm... So when did I do it? My last night in Saskatoon, as the light was fading from the sky. It's kind of an allegory for the rest of my life. I had so many sunny days to take pictures, but my last day in Saskatoon was overcast and I had to take what I could get.

Part of the problem was that I didn't really know how to photograph something so big. Bark macros are cool, but don't convey the enormity of the tree. My 50mm lens is nowhere near wide enough to get the whole trunk/branches, and neither is my zoom, which maxes out at 24mm. I had to wait to get the wide angle lens to make a serious attempt at this photo.

I took several exposures, and thought I would make an HDR image of the tree. I'm not really a fan of HDR photography... it usually looks so cartoonish and fake. In this case, I thought it would help bring out the texture in the bark, especially given the poor light. I've seen a few HDR flowers, trees and landscapes that were very tastefully done.

My HDR experiment was a miserable failure. It turned out looking like a preschooler's fingerpainting, or one of those 3D posters where you are supposed to cross your eyes to see the image. I plan to work on it some more, but I don't have a lot of time right now, or really any software for HDR. The elm HDR project is on the shelf. But for now, here is a single exposure of a very big tree that I miss a great deal.

I have officially moved to Ontario now. I'm posting from my own computer, in my own house, on my own internet connection which was just established yesterday. I suppose I could say a lot about the move and my first impressions of Ontario... but I really don't want to. Suffice it to say that I don't cope well with moving, and even the most seamless of moves would leave me a little bit stressed. This move, while it could have been worse, has given me a new-found appreciation of things I previously took for granted - like water, electricity, and a bed to sleep in at night. Now that I finally have those things, an internet connection and time for photography are really gravy.

Work and life are conspiring to do me in right now, but I do have a nice archive of photos from before I left Saskatoon, and some new ones I've taken here. I should be able to continue with the (sort-of) daily posting from now on. So, welcome back, blog readership of... probably zero. Here is the best macro shot I have taken of a fly.