I love the multiple exposure of small flowers and this one of a pink African violet I have on my window sill is one I took this week. I love how it seems to distill the various flowering stages into this one image making it seem to be a small bunch, a posy of colour and light!
Enjoy this on your Sunday wherever you are. It is sunny here, if still quite cold and I am going to take Joni and have a walk on the beach now that the tide is on the way out. I hope you do something as relaxing for the rest of your day.
Today it's pouring with rain, dull grey and windy. The leaves have all fallen and the flowers all finished. To cheer myself and everyone else up, I am sharing this photograph of deep frozen Queen Anne's Lace. The details of the tiny flowers that make up the 'platform' of the bloom are exquisite as seen through a macro lens. The flowers are frozen in blocks of ice when they are at their peak and then are preserved until I have time to photograph them (or need freezer space)! Now the Queen Anne's lace plants are just spiky stalks denuded of their blooms, but we have these to remind us of their past (and future) delicacy and glory.
In celebration of the beauties of flowers especially as photographed through ice and with a macro lens to show fine detail, I have created a collection dedicated to this subject.
It's true that although the fall is one of my favourite seasons (and definitely the best time to visit Eastern Canada) it always brings a mixture of moods. The sadness in the mix is related to the end of summer, which this year seemed was shorter than normal and not nearly as hot as it usually is. I feel that I didn't do half of what I planned or hoped to do. 'Ah well, there's always next summer' but that thought comes with a little sigh of resignation.
The fall also brings a feeling of restlessness as I am nagged by a persistent feeling that I should be leaving to go somewhere. There is also a slight mood of foreboding about what the winter might have in store for us and this hangs heavy as the stormy dark sky behind these bright leaves.
But in spite of all of that, the brilliant autumn light, magnified and intensified by the golden, orange and red colours leaves a feeling of joy that no other season seems to carry.
Caution: these contain a toxin which can be a skin irritant . Don’t handle them.
Joni, our border collie dog, like so many young animals has an overactive curiosity about every creature that she meets in her environment. The squirrels chattering shrilly while dancing above her on tree branches and the chipmunks, lodged silently inside drainpipes for hours patiently waiting for her to tire of the game feed her obsession, giving her hours of noisy entertainment. She will jump around snapping at bees that are buzzing among the flowers on our low bushes, so far with no ill effects to either or her the bees. (She must have a really bad aim.) She will jostle with me for elbow room when I am trying to photograph some small insect or other, edging in to get a closer look at it herself and often spoiling the photograph by making a leap for it as the shutter clicks.
The other day, however, she met this creature that moved at a more leisurely pace and didn’t seem to mind her incessant barking that alerted me to its presence. In spite of Joni, I managed to catch this photograph of it as it moved towards me. I loved its wonderful orange furry body and those great long dark tufts. It makes me think of Dougal the dog from “The Magic Roundabout”. It is an American dagger moth caterpillar.
‘Joni the Border Collie’ collection where you can read about her is here: .
