Here are a few photographs of spring blooms at a nearby public garden, from my visit yesterday….
Mar 082014
Mar 022014
The daffodils are still in bloom along Piney Woods Church Road, and more seem to be popping up every day. I find them intriguing, because even though they are so commonplace, they have an unusual feature, the corona, whose origin was not known to science until 2013. Just last year, researchers from the University of Oxford published a scientific paper in the Journal of Plant Science, indicating that the corona has evolved as a modification of the stamens of the flower.
Feb 232014
From my walk earlier today, I offer these two interpretations of daffodils blooming in the golden late afternoon sunlight.
Feb 212014
This is another image from my daffodil photo-shoot earlier today. The sun was low in the sky, shining through the corona, as if the daffodil had captured the sunlight within its core.
Feb 212014
I set out for Piney Woods Church late on a sunny afternoon, with one goal in mind. A daffodil beside a fence at the road edge was finally in bloom (I had scoped it out on a dog walk a short time before). My goal was to find a way to photograph it that would make it interesting. Dandelions and daffodils are much-welcomed signs of spring; they are also ubiquitous, floral equivalents of pigeons in a city square.
I spent half an hour with that daffodil, using my plus four and plus ten macro lenses. I took over sixty photos. I am not even sure which one I was using for the one below — the plus ten, I think. It is my favorite shot — and angle one rarely gets to take in a botanical garden, lying down and gazing upward.
Feb 202014
On a gray, slightly foggy morning, I arrived at Piney Woods Church Road with the particular intent of photographing a daffodil bud that I had seen (for the first time this year) the previous day. I quickly got down to work, shooting the leaves and flower bud from various angles, taking over 30 different pictures. At last, satisfied that there would be something of value to show for my efforts, I stood up and looked into the field beyond the roadside barbed-wire fence. A dozen feet away from me were two more daffodils, already flowering! The pasture also contained over a dozen cows, one of which was obligingly grazing beyond where the daffodils grew. The result is this image, a cow dining among the daffodils. (Since the cows avoid eating daffodils, the plants have been flourishing here for many years.)
