Wildflowers - Bee Happy

Summer is coming to an end, many of the flowers have gone by, but these few still bloom. We may have a frost or a dusting of snow next week at my house, so I have spent the past few days photographing bees, mushrooms, flowers, and the few hummingbirds still about.

another buzz

I listen for hummingbirds, but today find bees busy pollinating wildflowers. Hey, it's a sticky job, but someone has to do it, eh? Flower to flower with no end in sight this time of year, especially with all the rain we've had this month. Yet the bee gets little thanks, silly girls scream when they see one and no one likes to get too close. This close up was shot with a telephoto, from several feet away, so as not to disturb the important work.

1/1000 second at f/11, 300mm, ISO 400

Wild About Wildflowers

Fairy Trumpets

(can you hear the music?)

1/800 second (wind!) @ f/8, ISO400, 200mm

The wildflowers are fantastic this year. Rain almost every afternoon this summer has kept the color show going throughout the forest, meadows and along the roads. Early morning is a good time to photography wildflowers. You can find sunlit flowers against shadowy backgrounds before the sun gets too high and the light too harsh.

Bell Flowers

1/400 second @ f/5.6, 200mm, ISO400

I like to photograph the flowers after a rain or whenever the clouds soften the sunlight and shadows. The images below were captured under cloudy skies.

Wild Geranium
1/125 second @ f/8, 60mm, ISO 400

Paintbrush
1/125 second @ f/8, 60mm, ISO 400

Wild paintbrush glows with the beautiful colors of sunsets. A story is told of a young man who wanted to paint the summer sunset. He was given brushes dipped in all the right colors and painted a beautiful sunset. When finished he tossed the brushes to the ground and now each summer the wild paintbrushes grow red, pink and orange.

the red columbine

Here's a close up of a small red columbine I photographed Father's Day weekend in June.

Sorry to have been neglecting the blog recently. I've been busy selling my images at local festivals. Tomorrow is the 3rd one for me in a month's time. After that, I'll have a month's break and more time to spend photographing and posting here in consworld.

Pasques at the Patterson's

I went to visit my good friends, the Pattersons, a couple of days ago. 'Twas a good thing I had my camera along, for this group of three perfect pasques is quite a rare thing this year. With all the snow and freezing rains we've had, many of the pasques have brown frostbite on the petals. These three beauties must have emerged at just the right moment between the snows. We had snow again last night, so I wonder how they are looking now. Many thanks to the Pattersons for allowing me to crawl around on their ground shooting the flowers.

The broadtail hummingbirds should be coming any day now. I've read reports of a few sightings in the area. My feeders have come out of storage and are washed and ready. My two year old fuchsia is blooming in the greenhouse and ready to be hung outside - but only during the day, the nights are still too cold for it. I'm hoping my next post will include my first hummer pic of the year.

"Pasques at the Patterson's" was shot with Canon 30D, 60 mm lens, 1/125 second at f/8 from about 18 inches away.

Spring?

Spring Greetings!

I shot this photo of a pasque flower Monday, two days ago. Yesterday it was covered with few inches of snow. Much of the snow melted yesterday afternoon but high winds were blowing snow around and I stayed in. This morning, Wednesday, it's 17 degrees F and I'm reading that we may get as much as a foot of snow on Friday.

I'll keep looking for these beautiful little fuzzy wildflowers between snows for the next few weeks. For those of you who don't know these flowers, they are quite small (2 to 4 inches tall) members of the buttercup family. This was shot from ground level (read: wet knees and elbows) with Canon 30D and 60 mm lens from about 20 inches.

The first hummingbirds should be on their way soon. You know what I'll be shooting for then. :-)