5.29.2016

Flowers Around the Yard This Week: Close-ups

I have to look hard to find flowers around our yard. We do not have green thumbs here. Too, everything that we think is growing nicely gets mowed down by the deer. There's a well-worn deer path along the edge of our property, between the lawn and the woods.  We've even seen fox and coyotes following the path.

I do keep any eye out while I'm mowing the lawn. It gives me a chance to survey the land.  When I find something, I'll turn off the mower and go into the house to grab a camera.

Around the yard, I've been shooting mostly with the Olympus EM-1 and Panasonic 14-140 super zoom lens, with its fantastically convenient 1:2 equivalent macro and a focal range that "does it all". Sometimes I swap for the Olympus 60mm macro because of the focus stacking capability this lens has on the EM-1 body (8 shots automatically stacked). Oh, and for the shallowest depth of field I use an old manual focus Tamron 90mm macro on a Sony a6000 camera body.

Here are my favorites from the last week.

Best narrow depth of field is with the Sony a6000 and 90mm Tamron macro.

Fern

New fern. This is what happens soon after a fiddlehead opens and unfolds.

Our first iris of the season greeted me earlier this week. 

I saw a couple of these peeking out from under the holly bush at the corner of the house. Maybe the deer won't find them *chuckle*. My best guess is that this is a Bloody Geranium (*Geranium Sanguineum*)

A couple of new phlox buds

Our lilac bushes are flowering and smelling great.

We all know what this is lol. It's hard for me to think of a dandelion as beautiful, especially when it's in the process of “going to seed” on our lawn. But close up it really is so beautiful and intricate …. and so geometric. 


Nature's Perfection... Late afternoon and a back-lit leaf. A brand new maple leaf hanging from our Royal Red Norway (?) maple...as perfectly formed as nature allows.  It's so fresh and new that there are yet no caterpillar bites out of it, though I do see a bit of caterpillar silk in the lower left.


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