Category Archives: Flowers

Flowers

Black and white

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I’ve been spending time this week reading about current events, and experimenting with black and white photo effects.

Yellow rose with raindrops.
This year June has been a month of roses and raindrops.

One trick I learned a few years ago was to look at a photo in black and white, it brings aspects of composition into focus that one misses in color. Sometimes something that seems almost incidental in a color photo will really jump out at you.

Rose and raindrops in black and white, using silver effects from the Nik collection.
Black and white of the yellow rose brings out the textures of the raindrops.

This is a time to listen, with our ears, and our hearts and minds. To put aside our opinions and really try to imagine walking in the shoes of others. It recurred to me that looking at things from a perspective of black and white may be a metaphor: it’s time to look at things in a totally new way.

A black and white of the rose with the colors inverted.
With black and white inverted the shape of the rose jumps out.

As a conventional sort of person, the current events of the corona virus and the brutality of police toward citizens are really challenging me. But reading and listening, and trying to do so from other points of view to understand seem to be a necessary first step…Definitely before espousing opinions.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Flowers

Raindrops on everything

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May has been a peculiar month. Warm and cold, sunny and rainy. The news of the day combined with the weather made me think about a poem I learned in my French class in high school:

Il pleure dans mon coeur,

Comme il pleut sur la ville…

Guillaume Apollinaire

Translated: it is crying in my heart like it is raining on the city. The weather was gloomy and wet, suiting the gloom in the news.

I took these photos yesterday. I’ve often thought that May and June are really seasons of their own, not really part of spring and summer. May is iris season and June is rose season. Summer in the Puget Sound region really doesn’t start until July. This little gallery shows what’s in bloom right now on the cusp of the change, with raindrops to represent the tears so many have had to shed this month.

My wish is that you and yours can stay safe and sane as the storms rage about us. May your season of the rose be blessed.

For Photos by Jez’s Water Water Everywhere, The Changing Seasons Challenge, and Cee’s Flower of the day…in this case many flowers, but then I’ve missed many days…and City Sonnet’s Goodbye, May.

Flowers

Time marches on…

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Pale pink peony bud just beginning to open.
The pale pink peopny bud is still mostly furled, but a few more petals are opening out.
A pale pink peopny, covered with raindrops is almost open.
A pale pink peony flower in full bloom.

I walk the same route most mornings with the dogs. This lets me keep an eye on progress. This pale pink peony bush has been on my mind of late. today’s sunshine brought it out all the way.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day, and Nancy Merrill’s A Photo a Week: Opening, and the Lens Artists challenge: delicate colors.