Tag: blossoms

art, landscape, nature, photography, travel, world

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge 221: “Flower Favourites – and Why?”

solaner

It’s Saturday evening here in Germany, the sky is gray, and it’s raining. As we’re in the northern hemisphere, October means fall. So, I have to dig in my archive to find suitable images of blooming flowers instead of going out to a botanical garden or so. Nevertheless, Ann-Christine‘s challenge fits well in this gray and dreary time of the year to cheer us up.

Although I don’t have strong preferences when it comes to flowers, I do have some regarding photographs of flowers.

First of all: the Strelitzia

This is a closeup image taken with my macro lens from a backlit strelitzia blossom. I love them, because of the friendly warm base tone featuring smaller violet, blue, yellow, and green stripes. In addition, their shape is so unique.

 

Second: the Schlumbergera or Christmas cactus

This is also taken with my macro lens. I was laying below the plant equipped with a remote-controlled Speedlight and a black card box above. Here we have again a very unique-styled blossom.

 

Third: a pasqueflower, a protected plant because it’s quite rare nowadays.

pasqueflower

 

Fourth: Pulmonaria Officinalis, or lungwort. In German, one of their common names is “Brüderchen-und-Schwesterchen”, which translates to “little brother and little sister”

 

You might notice blossoms in lite blue and in lite pink. One plant has blossoms in blue and pink at the same time.

 

And finally the Amaryllis:

 

Here we have again a uniquely shaped blossom. Although you can buy onions each year starting in November and enjoy the blossoms for several weeks from approximately January, I picked an image taken in Cuba, where they were blooming outside in the gardens.

Maybe, I was able to inspire you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to Ann-Christine’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with the tag LENS-ARTIST, so that we can find it.

Take care!

art, flowers, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, plants

Lens-Artists Photo Challange 151: “From big to small“

solaner

It’s Patti’s round, this week, at The Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. She reminds us of an old principle this week. Start wide and narrow your view more and more.

So, when coming to a scene, take your wide-angle lens first and take a couple of shots. Then, step further into the scene and look for the details. Isolate a mountain, a tree, a flower, a part of a building, you got the idea. This does not necessarily mean doing macro.

Enjoy the gallery. Hint: clicking in one of the images starts the slideshow in a bigger size.

Second hint: I’m currently running a raffle. You can win a voucher code for Excire Foto  (*AD because of an affiliate link* ). Check out, how you can become one of the winners 😊

Take care!

art, culture, flowers, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, plants

Lens-Artists Photo Challange 150: “Let’s Get Wild!“

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We have a guest host this week for Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Diane She asks for the wild because she works in the wild as a park ranger.

I know, there are a few other meanings in the word “wild”, but I’m concentrating on wild as in “wildlife”.

Enjoy the gallery. Hint: clicking in one of the images starts the slideshow in a bigger size.

Second hint: I’m currently running a raffle. You can win a voucher code for Excire Foto  (*AD because of an affiliate link* ). Check out, how you can become one of the winners 😊

Take care!

art, culture, flowers, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, plants

Lens-Artists Photo Challange 149: “Cool Colors – Blue and Green“

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These are the days, where I’m happy to have software helping me discovering images quite fast. Tina asked for images with blue and green for the Lens-Artists photo challenge and this way I’m able to deliver very fast. Opening the find dialog, choose the two relevant colors and I’m presented with dozens of suitable images to choose from.

I hope you like the selection:

 

 

If you’re interested to give the software a try, there’s a free trial available:

*AD because of an affiliate link* : get the software

art, culture, flowers, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, plants

Lens-Artists Photo Challange 148: “Spots and dots“

solaner

Spots and dots ….. a hard challenge when photographing primarily nature. But, nevertheless, Ann-Christine, I’m taking the ball. Nobody said a challenge would be easy. That’s the essence and character of a challenge.

So, take the word “spot” first. It can mean a (dust/dirt) spot on a surface, but it can also mean a very certain location of activity or where something is located. In nature, you need to know such certain spots to find your subject.

First, I have a checkered lily and a spring snowflake. Do you see the spots and dots on the petals? I found it a couple of years ago in a very certain spot. Next, a holly blue, a spotted dogfish, and a gray seal. Nature uses spots for hiding the shape of animals to either hide them from predators or, vice versa, to be recognized too early by their prey.

When stepping back a bit, you can see i.e. poppies like dots in the fields or in early spring fields of alpine squills under the trees when they have no leaves yet. And, don’t forget the red dots of Ilex during winter.

The spots in the last image, I’m leaving for your imagination. Guess, what you see 🙂 I’m solving it later 🙂

Edit: the last image is taken by an intentional mis-focus of the tiny wavelets of the Mediterranean sea on a calm day backlit by the rising sun. The nice bokeh is the result of the mis-focus. Each of the circles was a sun sparkle

 

Take care!

art, culture, flowers, landscape, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, plants

Lens-Artists Photo Challange 146: “Gardens“

solaner

Gardens! Nowadays you can find them around many houses. But, the idea of having a garden is not that old. When spinning the time back for about 100 years, you would also find gardens, but they were generally looking way different than today. Instead of flowers and blooming bushes, you would have found vegetables and fruits. The gardens were used to grow food. Not everything was in shops available for sale. So, people had to take care of themselves. Only farmers used to have small so-called farmer’s gardens. But, even in these farmer gardens, you were able to find herbs among the flowers.

In Japan, gardening has a quite long tradition. The gardens usually have a religious background. In the past, I already told you, that our state capital Düsseldorf has one of the three biggest Japanese ex-pat communities (besides London and Paris). Not far away from my home, there is a Japanese garden, built by a Japanese garden architect. In Japanese gardens, each detail has a reason. Every position, size, and direction of each detail has a meaning. So, each year a group of Japanese gardeners comes over to reshape the garden.

I was there a few times and would go again when we would not have the pandemic still around. So, enjoy my images from the past.

This post is my contribution to The Lens-Artists Photo Challenge hosted by Amy.  Head over to her page and read to rules to participate.

As usual, click on one image to enlarge it.

Take care!

art, culture, photo-of-the-day, photography

Lens-Artists Photo Challange 146: “Focusing on the Details“

solaner

You might say now, don’t ask me for macros. OK, I won’t do it. But, nevertheless, you can see, focussing on the details does not necessarily mean macro photography. Having an overview is very nice. But, in general, the details are more important. You’re right, you have to focus and work on your inner eye to find the sweet spot, the composing supporting your idea most.

Go out, take your camera and take photos, come back and show your results. Link your post to Patti’s post, as she’s the host for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo-Challenge. Everyone is welcome.

 

You can click on the images to enlarge them. All the images are taken without a macro lens

Take care!

art, culture, photo-of-the-day, photography

Lens-Artists Photo Challange 145: “Getting to Know You“

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Or better, to get to know me 😊 (at least a little bit)

There are always two people in an image: the creator and the viewer.

Each image, I’m showing, is a part of me and you can experience a bit about me when watching my images (and, of course, reading the texts).

To find out more about me, you can switch to the About-me page.

I love being in nature and photographing nature, although, photographing the beauty of nature sometimes hurts. I love traveling and coming in touch with the ordinary people in the countries, I’m traveling. I love to learn about their culture. If you want to talk, drop me a note. Modern technology makes it possible 😊.

As I said, sometimes photographing the beauty of nature hurts. So, I picked a couple of images, where it hurt.

getting soaking wet for nearly two full weeks in Iceland
It’s usually freezing cold when we’re on the north sea island Helgoland in mid January

 

Aurora Borealis in Northern Norway – it’s very cold outside, especially at night
getting up very early – hours before sunrise to be in your spot at the right time
also before sunrise

 

in the heat of the day hiking without any shadow
or waiting for your game
climbing up mountains while >30°C

 

staying up all night for capturing a full circle of the bloodmoon, a comet or some stars

 

getting up at 4:25 a.m. to be there at the right moment

Photography hurts sometimes and I’m willing to suffer when the possible results are promising. The last image is from today. Getting up soo early and driving to your destination is exhausting. But, being there enjoying the silence and the light is sooo rewarding.

Take care!

art, culture, photo-of-the-day, photography

Lens-Artists Photo Challange 144: “Taking flight”

solaner

A dream as old as mankind: flying! Spread your wings and fly. The oldest story of flying men in the story Daedalus and his son Ikaros. Daedalus was famous for his artistry. To keep him, the king of Krete sent both to jail. As escaping from an island is nearly impossible. Daedalus made wings from him and his son from feathers and bee-wax. He advised his son to follow him in the sky and warned him to say away from the sun as the warmth might melt the wax. He also warned his son to not fly too low as the water might wet the feathers and becoming too heavy to fly. The story tells us, Ikaros flew too high and then he saw the wax starting to melt, he went down. Unfortunately, he went too far down and the feathers became wet and heavy. Now, he started upwards again to let the sun dry the feathers. In the end, you might have expected this, Ikaros felt in the ocean and went under. His father noticed the problem and started searching for Ikaros. But, he didn’t find him.

A couple of years ago I got the chance to fly. Not with a plane, but with a hot-air balloon. Although a balloon flight is not risk-free, it’s not as dangerous as the wings of Daedalus and Ikaros were.

I want to take you with me on a few balloon flights. Enjoy!

 

Thank you, Tina, for this wonderful topic for The Lens-Artists Photo challenge.

Take care!