Friday, July 8, 2011
Mission Sunset Time Lapse

Time lapse of the sunset over the Santa Barbara Mission from the Mission rose garden. The Mission is my favorite place to try out a new technique, so after an evening of driving around trying to find an interesting spot that might have some interesting clouds I ended up here. And I wasn't disappointed.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Varigated Miniature Rose

Most of my recent work has been architecture and Santa Barbara city related. Most of those images take a bit logner to plan and execute so the photo of the day has fallen behind a bit lately.so I decided to spend some time last weekend looking through some of my older flower shots looking for interesting unpublished images.

Sunday, December 26, 2010
Miniature Rose

By request, a beautiful rose for a wonderful person!

Saturday, April 12, 2008
Break time for the farmworker

Another lady bug fresh from work on our epi farm. They are doing a great job, the aphids are virtually gone! So she (he?) deserves a break. This is a rose from our first anniversary. Lasted well didn't it? Well, it helps to buy the bush rather than the cut flowers. :-D

Unlike the Ladybug from yesterday I shot this one with a macro lens attachment and no bellows. This was the closest I could get as compared to yesterday when I was actually at the maximum focal distance of the bellows. This way I can get a little bit of the beautiful surroundings. Oh, and as you can probably tell it's dark outside. I was using a hand-held light to get these shots. I'ts best to release the lady bugs in the evening unless you just want them to fly away.

It was interesting though, they were much warmer and therefore much more active tonight. It finally got to the point where I had to go inside because I was covered in ladybugs. Fortunately these don't bite unlike the apparently carnivorous ladybugs in the farm country where my parents live. When the farmers harvest the fields the ladybugs run... and then they descend upon my parents' house in a swarm.

Sunday, June 17, 2007
Rose in the Studio

We stopped at the Farmers' Market again this afternoon. I always love the multi colored petals, but this was my wife's pick. She has good taste!

Monday, June 4, 2007
Glowing Garden Rose

We recently got this rose a trellis because it was getting huge. And, like I mentioned yesterday, I hate to cut my plants! I don't believe it is a climber usually, but it really seems happy on the trellis. This photo was taken when there was just a shaft of afternoon sunlight shining down between our umbrellas. Made for a nice dappled background.

Friday, May 11, 2007
Scentimental

This was taken the on the same hound walk as yesterday's rose. I used to have a Scentimental Rose when I lived in the desert, but I could not keep it alive through more than one summer of 130° temperatures even with an automated dripper.

Thursday, May 10, 2007
Brass Band

This was in the neighbor's yard the other day. When we go out to walk The Hound we like to go by his place, there is always something amazing in bloom there. The day I took this was a little gray and rainy, which accounts for the interesting lighting.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Tropical Swirl

I like how this rose caught that drop of water in the top. This is another shot from the backyard. Yeah, I know, it's a theme lately "the Back Yard". But my hound hurt her foot and I did not get my birthday trip to Monterey yet. Maybe later this month! Oooh the flowers that are blooming there this time of year!

Sunday, April 29, 2007
Pink Rose

We have been looking for a nice rose. Because we don't have enough plants yet. (we can still get through our back yard.) This was one of the candidates at La Sumida Nursery. It's a tough decision, they have so many to choose from.

Sunday, March 4, 2007
Fourth of July Rose

We went trolling for tomato plants at all the local nurseries today. Guess it was a little too early for that. One of our favorite places (the place I shot this rose) was still using half of their outside plant area for a parking lot. Well, maybe next weekend!

Friday, March 2, 2007
More Flowers!

This is in response to the feedback I received this evening on the flower photos page. Ironically, flowers are the biggest category in the site. Of course, they are one of my favorite subjects too so I am happy to add more! It was actually a flower photo that inspired me to start the site.

Thanks for your feedback Sahana!

Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Popular Rose

It looks like there's gonna be a fight!

Actually, they got along really well and shared the flower. At one point there was even a third bee.

I have been known to chase bees, but in this case I was drawn to this scene by the same thing they were. There are a lot of beautiful roses out there but the yellow/red variegated varieties are my favorites!

Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Sunset at the Mission Rose Garden

(click on the main image to see a bigger version)

More experimentation! This image was created from about 11 shots of the sunset. I could not get exactly what I wanted from one shot from any one lens. The only thing I had that was wide enough to get the whole sunset was a fish eye. I like my fish eye, but in this case I wanted to give more of the feeling of standing there in the rose garden watching the sunset. The distortion of the fish eye detracted from that too much.

The sheer scale of things caused some interesting problems. The full scale image could be printed easily 4 and a half feet at high resolution. And as long as I am building this kind of thing I figure why not go for full scale!?

I think I need more ram... and more hard drives.

Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Rose Shadows

I particularly like the shadows of the stamen on the petal. The sun was cooperating very nicely on this one!

Sunday, September 17, 2006
Flutter Bye Rose

Yesterday was a great day to take pictures. We went to La Sumida Nursery, where we bumped into a good friend from church. We were looking for a rose, and after much debate this is the one I chose as my favorite. It is called "Flutter Bye." As the flowers bloom they are bright yellow and almost solid. Then as the blossoms get older they change to this beautiful peach - orange - yellow combination.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Backyard Rose Bud

Well most of our tomatoes have faded in the hot weather. But the roses are still happy! This one is just about to burst.

I really enjoy close up photography. The green covering of the bud is made of modified leaves called bracts. But I never really appreciated the tiny little leaves sticking out from the edges of the bracts before. There is a lot of beauty out there!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Neighbor's Rose Garden

The neighbors' roses were peekin' over the fence again, so I shot 'em!   :-D   

Monday, July 31, 2006
Hovering Bee

She's been busy! I am surprised she can still fly with all that pollen on her legs.

Thursday, July 27, 2006
Neighborly Rose

One of our neighbor's beautiful roses was peeking over the fence. Actually several of them are. We only have small yards here, in fact our neighbor's yard is actually a patio. But he makes good use of it. It is completely covered with roses in giant containers. This one is about 6 feet tall.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Sally Holmes

This is another image that we can thank Southern California Edison for (not to mention my neighbor up the street with the flimsy tv antenna.) Sometimes it takes a good power outage to get me away from my computer and out to enjoy nature!

We found this beauty at Island View Nursery in Carpinteria. It is a hybrid shrub rose from the UK bred by Robert A. Holmes in 1976.

Saturday, June 3, 2006
Icing Rose

This is one of several small roses we got recently. The color of this one reminds me of a nice butter-cream frosting rose. And I would write more but I have to go get a snack now, it's making me hungry!

Thursday, June 1, 2006
White Rose

Well I am sill not traveling far from home. This is from my neighbor's yard. He has some amazing roses. Perhaps after I finish one or two of current huge projects I can get a different perspective. :-D

Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Glowing Rose

I have been blessed with a good combination of skills that allow me to work from home most of the time. But, last week I was filling in for a friend who was on vacation. It is a difficult thing to get in the habit of going to an office when you don't normally do that, but there are rewards. This is an amazing climbing rose on the side of the building where I was working.