Last sunny weekend, we went off to hike in one of large city parks in Iowa City. This tree drew us for a closer inspections, as it had… pink and white flowers at the same time! First, we thought it had pink buds and white flowers,
but up close it was obvious that there are flowers of two different colors. How is it possible? We followed the flowers down to bottom of the tree , and saw that there are two different plants, growing together in perfect symbiosis.

I prepared the image for blog, and then had second thoughts. Last week, I was preparing this high contrast black and white image. Can the difference in colors be accentuated on this images the same way? I am still not sure, which one, color or B&W tells a better story of the tree.

I have a lonely tulip under the deck. This tulip also doesn’t look like it will present any flower this season. Out of desperation, I bought a pot of blooming tulips then. This old one was white when I bought him couple of years ago and before he was placed in the soil. The new set is red. More like between red and magenta? I am not sure. I spend almost a week, with Lensbaby and macro kit, photographing it from all distances and directions. Here is the gallery of the efforts.

Today’s image comes from the same session Tomasz mentioned several days ago. We were finishing off our evening in the studio, when I thought- how about paring a yellow gerbera with a yellow lemon? He was not very convinced at first, and when I set it up and took several images, I was not so sure myself. But it somehow transformed on the screen into quite an interesting still life.

Recently I find myself experimenting more and more with situations where you can shoot your subject by it’s reflection. Sometimes it’s just face in the mirror, sometimes it’s flower bouquet. Using mirror allows me to get some nice depth of field effects. This photo shows the car my brother went in to church for his wedding last week. It’s nice vintage British automobile with side mirrors mounted way ahead on the fenders. Today such thing probably wouldn’t pass pedestrian safety test, but back then nobody really cared.

Time again to show an iPhone photo. I have some stuff about apps and macro capabilities of this device coming, but so far- I am still reading and learning. So one straight of camera- well, almost. I found Lightroom very eager to get the photos out of iPhone .
Anyway, the huge advantage of iPhone as camera is having it with you all the time. I can take photos of things around when we go shopping, for example, which opens new subjects for me. This one was taken outside our local mall. The lamp above the pot with flowers looked just like  a full moon.

Revisiting my photos from California, I have an impression that I hardly shoot anything other then flowers. Maybe because my host had a real green thumb, and there was so many plants around her backyard. But also interesting plants were all over Davis… And they were not moving, so were easy to photograph. Or I just like photographing plant. No idea, really. In either case, what I particularly like about this image is the matching of flower and background colors.

I am not in the mood for anything much today. I just picked a photo, and played some with sliders in Lightroom. The flowers were far too bright, and I just wanted to tone them down a bit, and lost all the color in the wood in the process. Looks weird, but should go well with my mood.

Just a quickie today. Something fresh from the card. It is getting late, but since I am downloading photos from today’s trip to Southeastern Iowa, organizing and sitting in front of computer anyway, I might as well pick up something and post. I took it while exploring garden in reconstructed old fort in Fort Madison, Iowa.

I am currently spending 72 hours in California. It is a work related trip, but I am taking every chance I have to photograph. Which is not too hard, as I am staying in colleague house with her two labs. Lots of walking involved.
But also nice yard, and so much details at home, I wish I had my Lensbaby. I packed only one lens, one body, but on the weight basis it was still more then my clothing .
I live this backyard shot, because of the bokeh I managed to get out of my 18-200 mm f/3.5-5.6 lens, and the colors in the fence, adding interest to the simple photo of the flower.

I spend some time during AirVenture shooting with my Lensbaby. Most of the photos turned out to be out-of-focus disaster. Whatever stayed, was a compositional disaster. There are some which I still like, and it is one of them. It is an example of those surprising photos, which look like they have been taken in another, completely different place and time. There is nothing there to talk about planes or flying. There is still daylight on the flowers in front of the hut, and the warm lamp is lighting the inside of the place. I took it on the evening walk, when guys were busy photographing planes with their flashes and stuff.