A Photo a Day by Bill Heller

Red Photos
 
Saturday, April 19, 2008

Tulip Feather

 More plants followed us home from the grocery store the other day. One of them was this beautiful Tulip. The bellows was still out from the recent Ladybug fest so this shot was inevitable really.

 
Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Red Dragon

 I like dragonflies and this guy and his friends were putting on quite a show. They were diving down to the surface of the water and skimming across it (hence the name I guess,) I got a few action shots but this is my favorite!

While I was trying to identify this guy I found many sites incorrectly identifying damsel flies as dragonflies. The way you tell the difference is by how they hold their wings when they are resting. This is a dragonfly, wings perpendicular to the body. A damselfly holds it's wings back against it's body.

 
Thursday, July 6, 2006

Red Lady

 This morning I was playing in our little garden, and I found this little guy on one of our interesting plants. I don't recall ever seeing a Ladybug with no spots. The leaves it was exploring are on a small Plumeria tree (think of the sweet smelling flowers that most Hawaiian leis are made of) The tree has been with us for years but many times it has been fighting for life with no leaves at all. As you can see it is very happy now.

 
Wednesday, June 7, 2006

First Tomato of the Season!

 I am sooo excited, this year is our second attempt to grow tomatoes in our small back yard. And I think my wife has figured out the secret as you can see. This guy is beautiful and smells perfect! (smell is one of THE most important things in picking a good tomato IMO) It is a "Pink Grape Tomato" it is only about an inch long, which is about how big it is supposed to be. And as you can see there are more on the way.

 
Friday, May 5, 2006

Bottle Brush

 Well it is some sort of Callistemon anyway, there are quite a few and some of them are similar. Anyway, it seems to be from Australia. 'Course this particular one lives just up my street.

I was actually watching a bee, trying to get her photo, if you look closely on the right side of the flower you can see her through the red flower, and just make out a silhouette.

 
Sunday, April 30, 2006

Nun Bee

 The sun came out today!!! Not something that would normally be such a surprise in California, but this year you have to take it one day at a time.

In honor of our beautiful sunny day we decided to take a bit of a rose garden tour. We went to the Mission rose garden and the rose garden at Fess Parker's Resort on Cabrillo.

This was one of my favorite roses of the day. I was actually taking pictures of it before the bee flew into the picture. She was quite the ham! She hovered all around in front of the rose for me.

 
Saturday, April 8, 2006

Palm Saturday Roses

 Today we went to the Santa Barbara Farmers' Market to find Palm Fronds to decorate our church for Palm Sunday. We didn't find much in the way of palms, but there are always fun things to look at anyway!

 
Friday, March 17, 2006

Playin' With My Food (AKA This Little Piggy)

 I am really enjoying the food photography thing. Two of my favorite things, how could it be wrong!?

It doesn't hurt that we have a variety of very cool props around. This little piggy has been on our cool stone table for a while and I decided that it was time for his photo shoot! ('Course, the coffee table is not usually that clean :)

 
Thursday, February 23, 2006

Satin Bud

 This is another image from the same trip to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History as this one. And, like the odd lighting on that image, this one benefits from the tight quarters and strange shadows. This is pretty close to a raw scan, the deep red color is real and I love these flowers for their intense colors. This is not the first Dahlia to be the photo of the day.

Incidentally, these are named after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl.

 
Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Valentines Rose

 Ahh yes I have been slacking off a bit lately. (Actually it has been a very busy week!) But, I thought this image from one of my cards was a good image to get back on track with! I hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day!
 
Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Bougainvillea Bracts Close-up

 This is one of those plants like a Poinsettia. The red things are actually technically more like leaves than actual flowers, they are called "Bracts." The real flower is a small white bloom that comes out from the center of the groups of red leaves. You can see a couple of the buds in this photo.

Although they are not technically part of the flower the bracts serve an important role in the pollination of the plant. They act as kind of a beacon for pollinators that might otherwise miss the small white flowers as they fly by.

Daisies are another type of plant with a similar structure. What is commonly called a daisy flower is actually a cluster of small flowers (called the Capitulum) surrounded by bracts. In this image the bracts are white and the capitulum is yellow.

 
Saturday, January 21, 2006

Soft Rose

 This is an early photo I took when I first got my close-up lenses on eBay. The low aperture gives a nice softness that we have dubbed the "Fuzzy Flower Filter".

 
Monday, December 26, 2005

Birthday Sunset

 This one was posted a little late. But, it is a belated birthday present for my best friend who is now (January 16th) my wife. Yesterday, she asked me what picture she got for her day. And, due to some major wedding preparations at that time I was getting behind on the photo of the day so she got to choose her own.

 
Monday, December 5, 2005

Icing Inspiration

 I'm starting to practice decorating cakes for a special event the end of this month. I have seen some beautiful roses created in icing and decorated with powdered food coloring so I was looking for an image to use as a reference. If I come close to this I'll post a photo of the buttercream version. If not... well, I'm sure it will be a delicious failure. :-D

 
Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Dahlia in the Sun

 This is another image taken as a reference for my best friend's watercolors. An earlier Dahlia appeared here on April 12th.

Strange though, I haven't seen any watercolors come from these yet. I'll have to talk to her about that!

 
Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Rancho Super

 I like taking photos at night and this was a great subject.

This guy lives at a carwash off of highway 111 in Palm Desert near Palm Springs, CA.

 
Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Possibilities

 My favorite roses are yellow in the middle with red edges. Yellow roses stand for friendship, red for love. My best friend recently told me that yellow with red edges means "possibilities".

I guess that makes sense.

 
Monday, November 7, 2005

Hovering Bee

 If you have been watching the site for a while you know that I like to chase bees. So far this has turned out well for me. I assume my luck will run out eventually, but for now it's making for some really nice shots.

This one even made it to one of my greeting cards.

 
Monday, October 10, 2005

Lucifer Canna

 My mom gave me this Canna many years ago and it is blooming again. It was never very happy in a pot until we got two very tall (2.5 feet) skinny (12") pots. It seems to love to put its roots down, way down.

It is called a Canna "Lily" but it is more closely related to Ginger and Banana plants.

 
Thursday, September 29, 2005

Orchid

 I grow a lot of my flower pictures. But this is one that I purchased while it was blooming from the Santa Barbara Orchid Estate. And, they are having an open house and sale in the beginning of November. So, I'm thinking it is time to buy some film. :-)

Perhaps while I am there they can refresh my memory as to the proper name of this guy so I can stop calling it the "red and Yellow Orchid."

 
Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Award Winning Rose

 Award winning, but maybe not the kind of award you might think.

Last August was the first time I put my photography on display. I was very excited about doing it, but I did not really know what to expect. I have received many kind words and great stories (especially stories about humming birds,) but one of the highest complements yet was on Sunday at the Santa Barbara Arts and Crafts Show.

This rose was framed and sitting on an easel near the sidewalk. A young girl, about 10 or so, walked by talking to someone I assume was her mom. Neither of them were really paying much attention to the show. But, she stopped in mid sentence and said "WOW! Look at that Rose!."

Now that is the kind of complement I like. There are many artists out there trying to impress people (especially people with money) with their "deep interpretation" of things. And, that's not to say none of them have great work. But, as far as I am concerned, the complements of children (and animals) are among the highest you can receive!

 
Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Swirling Sunset Petals

 Another print from my first show at the Santa Barbara Public Library, Townley Room. Flower close-ups are one of the first things I started to tinker with when I got a real camera. But, by real I don't mean expensive or brand new. I got a manual Canon AE-1 and some cheap lenses off of eBay. (This was back when I could look through all of the items in the photography section on eBay in one evening) Because of working with anything I could find a good deal on, the combination of lenses I put together causes a slight halo at the edges. Rather than giving up on the lenses, I found the softness makes for beautiful flower close-ups. My friend and I dubbed them my "Fuzzy Flower Filters."

The important thing if you want to get into photography is to tinker and have fun. You don't need to spend thousands of dollars on the latest equipment. You don't need digital this and auto-focus that, I have the most fun with my trusty, all-manual AE-1. That's not to say I don't have an auto-focus camera and a small digital for quick shots. But, I find myself more inclined to carry a cheaper camera all over the place with me than I would an expensive top-of-the-line camera. If you don't have your camera with you, you can't get the cool spontaneous things you see on a daily basis. And the combination of an $80 AE-1 from eBay and a high quality slide film will result in sharper images than all but the most expensive digital cameras.

In the end you have to find what works best for you personally so you can have the most fun with it.

 
Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Canna Close-up

 One of my favorite subjects, flower closeups. This was actually the theme of my first show at the Santa Barbara Public Library in August '04

This one is a special favorite because the plant was a gift from my mom over six years ago, and it is still going strong.

 
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