Where Are All the Flowers?

Red Rose

Last blog was about winter scenes and this is about flowers. When I used to do a photo a day and a weekly post here I had my photographic efforts organized by those blogs. I stopped that in 2018 and so 2019 is a jumble of dated uploads on my hard drive.

Not a problem for me until the time comes around for garden club photographic entries or a friend asks for three flower photographs as a Christmas gift for a mutual friend. Easy, huh? Just go to the summer months. It snowed the 23 of May and nothing bloomed in June because it was too cool. And the lead photo is from a green house, and the last one from my studio in February.

Yellow Banded Bumble Bees in a sunflower

Fall redeemed the season which seemed all too in a rush to bloom and seed and go away before winter returned. Summer 2018 had been a great year for flower photography but all my best flower photos of 2019 seemed to be in chasing the insects in a frenzy to get all the pollen they could while it lasted.

Fly in a Hollyhock

The star of the summer

And oh, the Painted Ladies. They were just everywhere. One of the largest migrations going of these butterflies this summer.  And I never seemed to have passed up an opportunity to attempt a photographic capture from their first appearance on milk thistle through yellow cone flowers.

Danse Pour Deux

Solo Performance

As a gardener disappointed by my hollyhocks, poppies, and sunflowers I found solace in the wonderful return blooms of my orchids in the studio. They are preparing to do it yet again.

Return Performance 

Georgia O'Keeffe is quoted as saying she didn't much like flowers but painted them because they were cheap models. I hardly ever paint time but I love to photograph them.

Best of Flowers - 2017 Daily posts

Back of Monk Thistle

I joined the Angel Fire Garden Club at the end of summer this year. I think my sister thought I had lost it. But I figured if I was spending so much time photographing flowers I ought to support them on at least a local level. I had always shunned them in the past, the club and perhaps the flower, because I hated manicured gardens and rather looked down of artist who painted flowers. And I raise things I can eat and spend my time with supporting those.

I have euphoria in my studio and hollyhocks and oriental poppies outside because they just do their thing. But this was a wet summer and I had a deck to decorate with beds around it. And for some reason, beyond explanation I developed a focus on photographing flowers. And especially thistles.

Phalaenopsis Orchid

California Poppy

Green Stemmed Paper Wildflowers on the path

Hollyhock bud

Pansy

Australian Rose

Week 31 - 2017 in Photographs

Day 211

 One again I did not get far from home. Fortunately home ground had lots of photo opportunities from dawn to hummingbirds to flowers.

Day 212

 Dawn and dusk offers swarms of humming birds to try to photograph. High speeds in dim light. And later this week close to hundreds of birds looking like swarms of bees. The photograph above has 21 birds. Or can you find more?

Day 213

 And then there is Day 213 where I decided to see if I could focus in with the long lens before it flew away. They pause and wait for their opportunity at one of the three feeders. I fortunately have things they can roost on so you focus on their favorite perches and wait for one to land.

Day 214

 The water lilies were on my drive path to two cats I was sitting. They were a pleasant surprise. And proof you should never go out of the house without your camera.

Day 215

Back at home there was raindrops on hollyhock buds.

Day 216

 And pansies.

Day 217

The monsoon rains continue. They keep me rooted at home as much as the absence of time in my schedule to free roam in a wider circle. Some opportunities next week. Want to get down to Las Vegas to photograph their old buildings but I have been saying that for a month.

Week 39 - 2015 in photographs

Day 267

The week was about the ends of summer, the beginning of fall, and a wonderful pause between the rush of seasons. Good weather for walks and capturing sights around me.

Day 268

And in the middle of this a new orchid in the greenhouse I care for from time to time. I love orchids. I love the unusual in plants. Even the weeds. A spent thistle leads off the week, and a just beginning to bloom is next. The bees and butterflies seem to love these weeds others dig up and try to eradicate.

Day 269

Both thistle photos came from a wonderful walk in the neighborhood with friends and our fur kids. I have Magique trained to the ways of a photographer. She can still at times hog the view.

My companion 

Day 270

I love the landscape as it hangs between summer and winter. It is when the golds begin to make their appearances in the grass and the aspens and the stalks of Great Mullen, an other weed.

Day 271

And then there are those surprises like a very late blooming hollyhock.

Day 272

And the sadness of a favorite subject slipping into its last fall. I have photographed this solo aspen for years. It will not green up next spring. But it posed nicely for one last record of its life.

Day 273

Week 29 - 2015 in Photographs

Day 197

I decided to dedicate this week of photography to flowers. With our wet spring and summer they seem to grow and bloom like weeds whether wild or cultivated. I had thought my Borage did not make the winter. Instead it came up outside the hollyhock bed. Only one of those has bloomed thus far but the buds are numerous.

I begin this week with an orchid blossom from the plants in my studio. For years I bought orchids to enjoy the blooms on them when bought and they never seemed to bloom again. Now I have three blooming for a second and third flowering and a baby which was spawned off of the older orchid seems to be setting up to bloom itself.

Day 198

The salmon poppies were extraordinary this year. And even our heavy rains did not daunt them. I am including a bonus picture of half the field of poppies this year. If one poppy because of size and depth is difficult to photograph a bed of them is even harder especially with a slight breeze.

Bed of poppies

My peony bloomed this year. It has yet to be highly successful but it produced two blooms and I captured one of the buds just opening and with an ant on it. There have been more insects than we are used to this summer.

Day 199

The first hollyhock to bloom was the newest, a variegated double ruffle pink. Its blooms were too heavy for the stalk and I captured this photo before I staked it of a cascade of blossoms.

Day 201

And another of my neglected (forgotten) irises bloomed. The danger of planting too many things at once is you forget what you plant. The longer I garden the more I learn. Only one or two new plants at a time. I say that but I have put in three new hollyhocks this summer and some new grasses in the wild herb bed. Thankfully it has rained enough I think they are surviving my neglect.

Day 200

And then there are the blossoms which I have not had to care for: the sunflowers on the sides of the roads and the cholla cacti.

Day 202

Both species put on a grand show this last week or two. Desert plants and high mountain botanicals have taken advantage of the moisture after the drought of several years to bloom and pollinate.

Day 203

And what photographer doesn't want to take advantage of that. I promise no flowers next week. I have saved up some photographs of Folsom and Johnson Mesa for the coming week.

Sometimes You Get Lucky - The lucky shots of 2014

Butterfly on Flower

Another photographer friend who does the 365 day challenge with me brought up the concept of doing a few blogs on the best of her photographs. This is not a competition because she is a better photographer. But I welcomed the opportunity to look back at the 365 and see if I could pull out 5 or 6. Would you believe 32?

That is a bit many for one blog so I decided to separate them. These are the lucky shots which stood out during the year. They are not a culmination of my skill but of familiarity where I live and my equipment and plain dumb luck.

I am not a tripod sort of photographer. Not enough patience. But I have learned a lot of yoga like bracing moves, I have a new 55-300mm lens which I love, and together with my 23 megapixel camera I am able to get some nice macros at a distance. On the particular day I captured this butterfly on a flower I was about 15 feet away and leaning against a support of a deck so I could take pictures of flowers in a bit of a breeze. I was totally surprised when I got home to find the details were clear enough to see the center of the butterfly's eye. It is rather like the fish that didn't get away this summer.

Hummer taking a break

This was another of those surprise captures. A bit of a chilly morning on a busy feeder day and this tiny, smaller than the average, hummingbird was all fluffed up taking its time getting in line at one of the feeders outside my studio. I grabbed the camera and braced myself against the door jam and took just a couple shots before he got annoyed.

Two Red Tail Hawks on a power pole

And this lucky capture was at the Maxwell National Wildlife refuge. And the two hawks (mother and offspring?) did not stay on this post for long. I had a tripod in the car I was in, but I ended up bracing the camera across the hood. I think hawks look ever so much better on tree limbs but a photographer never looks a gift shot like this in the f-stop. I can go back and look up the specs on this shot. Nikon keeps them all on the image file but when a friend first asked I said, "whatever the camera was set on when I saw the birds."

Darkeyed Junco on Hollyhock stalk

I was in the studio painting this December when I noticed the Juncos and mountain sparrows were going crazy over the suet cakes hanging where the hummingbird feeders had been this summer. They were all on the other side of double pane windows that had been through several storms without being washed. Who am I kidding? I think I last cleaned outside and inside in June. What the heck, the camera was there and with digital you do not pay for film. I was shocked at the clarity of the photographs I took. Sometimes with digital cameras you reach a sweet spot on the focus where even a dirty lens does not register. I have one long lens with a horrid scratch right off the center and it very rarely registers on an image.

Hollyhock in a morning shower

This was the summer of flowers. Taking flower pictures is my sister's forte and not mine but I decided to practice this year. I will be doing another blog of the flowers of this year. But this one was really special because it was gently raining as the sun broke through the trees one morning. I was standing under the deck trying to keep the camera dry. My long lens captured this distant hollyhock against the dark forest. Because of the light and the focal depth I ended up with a black background and dawn illuminated raindrops. Oh, and again braced against the deck pillars to make the low light exposure work.

These are all favorites of mine from the 365 posted photographs this year. Not necessarily the best technical shots but the luckiest in my opinion.  My favorite photograph this year, however, is the one below. I have photographed the buffalo on the Vermejo Park Ranch which runs along the highway a lot. First you are lucky when they are in the field.

The Crown Prince

But lucky part of this photograph was how close the herd was to the fence given that there were several young calves. The cows were so very intent on the great long grass they forgot about us. The calf was very interested indeed, however. It made for a fantastic composition, and without that buffalo are just big furry beeves. Which, I am reminded, can go through from standing still to 40 mph in a very short distance.