A Photo a Day by Bill Heller

Daisy Photos
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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Orange Gerbera Closeup

 More beauty courtesy the Santa Barbara Farmers' Market.

 
Friday, June 8, 2007

Glowing Gerbera

 This is another Gerbera from last week's farmers' market. They are still beautiful, maybe we'll have to see if they have anything else interesting this weekend.

 
Sunday, June 3, 2007

Studio Daisy

 Usually I like to take pictures of nature where I find it and leave it for others to enjoy. (My neighbors have told me repeatedly to take some of their flowers but I just can't bring myself to cut them.) The trouble is, I have never seen a Gerbera growing that looked quite like this.

There was one cool one that I wish I had gone back to the Nursery for, but it was not variegated. So I had to bring this one home from the farmers' market and set up a little studio shoot.

Of course, he had friends. So you'll probably see more in the next few days.

 
Thursday, May 17, 2007

Daisy Bee

 I was up to one of my favorite pastimes last weekend, chasing bees. This one was quite cooperative. She was at a local Nursery so there was plenty of things for her to eat!

 
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Ladybug Daisy

 I noticed this little guy (or girl) when we were walking The Hound the other day. If you look close enough you can actually see my reflection in his back. I did a little poking around to see if perhaps the lack of spots meant it was a younger ladybug (I thought I read that somewhere). But apparently it's just a different kind of Ladybug and there are hundreds of different kinds in the US, thousands in the world.

I did however, find out that the name Ladybug comes from when farmers prayed to the Virgin Mary to help save their crops from pests. When the small red beetles came to save the day (and the crops) the farmers started calling them "The Beetles of Our Lady".

 
Thursday, February 22, 2007

Backlit Morning Daisy

 Even in the middle of winter there are beautiful flowers to photograph here. That's not to say it is not cold. The day after I took this was the windiest coldest day of the winter so far. But fortunately the ocean seems to keep things just warm enough for things to survive. Even if we get frost it is usually mild and patchy.

Aside from these tough daisies, the Calla Lilies are starting to really put on a show now too. Some of our spring bulbs are already coming up that we planted in the fall. So many beautiful subjects! So little time!

 
Sunday, January 21, 2007

Still Sleeping

 When normal people go on vacation they sleep in. Then you have me and my hound dog. Miss hound seems to like to get up early when we are in a different place. Maybe because she knows that is when I get some of my best pictures. Or, maybe she's excited to go out and smell what there is to smell. (She has long since sniffed all there is to sniff at home.) At any rate, she woofs and since she has me wrapped around her cute little paw, we get up and go out. When this started I was not very happy about it, but I have learned that there will usually be a number of beautiful images that reveal themselves during our morning constitutional.

I would write more, but Zoe is sitting by the door right now. She is trying to remind me there is more to life than sitting in front of the strange glowing, humming box.

 
Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Daisy in the Morning Dew

 This is another photo credit for The Hound. There is no other reason I would be up early taking a walk when everything is cold and dew covered. She always leads me to nice photos though so she is worth it.

 
Thursday, October 19, 2006

Shady Daisy

 This is one of my favorite daisy photos. The angle of the light really brings out the texture of the flower.

 
Thursday, August 31, 2006

Daisy Study

 I really like this shot because, not only can you make out the individual flowers in the center of the daisy, but you can see the different stages of their development. In the center they have not opened yet, but has you move out you can see the stages of the flowers' development.

This is not the first time I have enjoyed the structure of a daisy on the photo of the day.

 
Sunday, August 13, 2006

Shredded Gerbera

 This is another beauty from yesterday's trip to La Sumida. I love Gerbera Daisies, but it is particularly nice to see some interesting variations. I usually see them more as cut flowers but this was actually a plant. Might just have to find it a spot in the yard!

 
Saturday, July 22, 2006

Bee Dazzler

 The bees have been wild this year. And, as I have yet to be stung, they are still one of my favorite subjects. Actually, I love photographing flowers and the bees add some life.

 
Saturday, April 22, 2006

Little Purple Mums

 Our next-door neighbors have a little girl that is just old enough to wander down the sidewalk with her grandpa. On a number of occasions we have seen her wander over to these flowers and examine them very closely. She seems to really appreciate the structure of them. I have never seen her grab them like you would expect of a small child. She seems to really love them and I can see why! Maybe she'll be a photographer when she grows up!

They were not the easiest things to identify though. They seem to be some type of mum, closest we could find was Chrysanthemum frutescens 'Vancouver'.

 
Sunday, March 12, 2006

Purple Daisies

 My muse took me for a walk yesterday and we found some beautiful daisies that don't seem to mind the sub 40° F night time temperatures right now.

 
Friday, February 3, 2006

Sunrise Daisy

 This one looks like a beautiful sunrise.

 
Thursday, January 12, 2006

Yellow Winter Daisies

 Don't get me wrong, I had an amazing honeymoon in Monterey. But, just the seemingly minor change in latitude made me appreciate how good we have it in Santa Barbara. These Daisies are just one of the flowers in full bloom right now around our home. I snapped this shot during a recent hound walk.

 
Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Purple Daisy Shadows

 I like the shadows on the rock, they are as interesting as the flowers themselves.

 
Saturday, December 10, 2005

Lone Daisy

 This was a lone rebel daisy. It must have not been the right time of year for them because, in a large expanse of green, this was the only daisy.

 
Thursday, December 8, 2005

Purple Daisies

 I like the petals of the flowers in the middle, the ones that are sticking toward the camera. They are at just the right angle to poke up into the plain of focus, so their tips are in focus. But the flowers themselves fade into the background because of the wide open aperture.

 
Thursday, December 1, 2005

Sunset Daisies

 This is from a nice sunset walk in Carmel.

 
Saturday, November 26, 2005

Orange Calendula

 Well this was a hard one to find. Most of the images I found online that match this flower exactly are labeled "Orange Daisy". And, I was pretty sure that was not right.

Fortunately my best friend, the botanical genius, was able to identify it with her trusty flower guide.

 
Monday, September 26, 2005

Daisies for Daisy

 Well it was a very busy weekend at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum Art Walk (and that is the reason the photo of the day has turned into the photo of the week lately). I talked to a lot of people, but I have to dedicate this image to my favorite customer of the weekend. A happy little girl named Daisy with a beautiful smile. Her mom was looking of a picture of daisies.

 
Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Yellow Daisy

 I usually look for more going on in the background of my photos. Kind of like the first image on this site. But sometimes there is something to be said for simplicity.

 
Monday, August 1, 2005

Fibonacci Daisy

 I really like flowers that are a little irregular like this one and another of my favorite daisies. But there is an interesting contrast in this one. Although the petals are quite wild, the center is incredibly orderly. In fact it is orderly to a mathematical precision.

There is a sequence of numbers that predicts very closely these kinds of shapes in nature. It is called the Fibonacci Sequence. Anything from the number of scales on each successive row of a pine cone and the leaves on a tree to the parts of the center of a daisy. The sequence is very easy to create. Each number is the sum of the previous two numbers in the sequence. So starting with 0, 1 and adding them together you get 0, 1, 1. Next you add 1 and 1 and get 0, 1, 1, 2 and so on...

0,1,1,2
| | 1+2=3
| | | 2+3=5
| | | | 3+5=8
| | | | | 5+8=13
| | | | | | 8+13=21
| | | | | | | 13+21=34
| | | | | | | |  21+34=55
| | | | | | | |  |  34+55=89
| | | | | | | |  |  |  |  |
0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89

So if you were to start in the very center of the daisy, called the "Capitulum". You would probably find one individual flower (the Capitulum is actually a cluster of small flowers. So, a single daisy is actually a group of very small flowers botanically speaking). Moving out from that first flower in concentric circles you would find each row contains 1 then 2 then 3 flowers and so on. It may not be exact, but more times than not you will find it is very close.

 
Thursday, May 12, 2005

Fountain Daisies

 In the Cannery District in Monterey there is a beautiful fountain. It is a sculpture of several dolphins leaping in the air. This is the pool around the fountain. You can see the silhouette of the dolphins reflected in the pool.

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