the yellow season

The second clutch of Say's phoebes have fledged and are busy bulking up for their flight south, the hummingbird numbers peaked at 315 this year, and a group of at least one hundred nighthawks circled, gathering insects before an approaching storm.  It was a week of subtle but noticeable changes in the weather.  Yellow began to dot the landscape, in the form of both cultivated flowers and native plants, and I want to share some of the lovely shades with you.

When I was photographing the day lilies, I realized that the inside structure looks decidedly like some of the sandstone slot canyons of the west.  Perhaps a stretch of my imagination but fascinating.

Strange that I never noticed the crenulation of three of the petals prior to this year.  That happens when you pull out the camera and really look.

Growing along the highways of northern New Mexico is a wide variety of wildflowers at this point, including the sunflower.  I love this particular tangle accompanied by some sky drama.

The group below seemed particularly friendly.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

fleeting beauty

Every time we watched the news this week, our hearts sank.  It would be easy to use this blog as a political forum, and at times like these, it seems that would be a more significant and helpful use of cyber space.  The last thing I want to do is be a purveyor of fluff.  But perhaps there is also a desire for beauty, however fleeting.  Thus, the day's blog features beauty that presented itself during the past few days.

I could say the dog ate my homework and that is why the blog is a bit late this morning.  But in actuality, I was chasing the most perfect specimen of swallowtail butterfly I have ever seen around the garden.  Flying from one flower to another, the swallowtail made it challenging for me to photograph the full wing span using my 70-200 mm lens.

With the recent rains, the cushion cacti have exploded into bloom on the mesa.  The blooms only last  a day and I found I had to train my eyes to look across the landscape to see them.  They are everywhere.

In bright sunshine, the blooms are almost like fuchsia on fire.

May every single person on our fragile and endangered planet be able to catch a bit of beauty this week, fleeting or otherwise.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

following the bloom

There is so much happening in the garden and landscape right now that I hope you will indulge me in one more blog featuring flowers.  Despite the year's relative lack of precipitation, which to date is just above three inches, some of it fell at the perfect time for wildflowers to take note and make a grand appearance.  Along with the blue flax, gaillardia seeds were part of a wildflower mix used to recover areas along New Mexico highways.

The gaillardia are making quite the splash and butterflies have taken notice.

The spits and spats of rain that have fallen also helped the garden flowers, such as this bloom on a clematis vine.

Although the blue flax is on the wane, there are still some jewels in the mix.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

bee's eye view

Years ago, a nurseryman in Santa Fe said jokingly that I was a penstemanaic, a person who loves penstemons.  And yes, I do love this group of plants that are part of the figwort family.  Paintbrush also belongs to this family, as do a wide variety of wild and now somewhat domesticated flowers.  Rocky Mountain penstemon is a deep blue-ish purple but when these plants occupy space with other species, their colors cover a broad spectrum, including fuchsia.  Recently, I found this one in the shade of a wisteria.  Given the brilliant colors of most penstemons, this almost qualifies as albino.

Here is a Rocky Mountain penstemon, up close and personal.

This genus of the flower world is gorgeous and beguiling, particularly to pollinators.  You can see why the flowers below, from a stalk of Penstemon palmerii, are particularly interesting to bumblebees.  They can fit their entire bodies inside "bumblebee garages", writhe wildly and come out entirely covered with pollen.  Here is a bee's eye view.

The flowing stripes on the palmerii petals is another example of nature's inspiration for abstract art.

From a pure photography standpoint, shooting this week presented some interesting challenges.  The wind blew a lot, moving the flowers every which way, but worse yet, when the wind wasn't blowing the no-seeums discovered me very quickly and began taking their fill of my blood.  Luckily, that part of the natural cycle ends when the monsoon begins.  

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

gentle

For much of the United States (and the world for that matter) last week was a wild ride, not only politically, but when it comes to weather.  Some areas had soaking and flooding rains as well as tornadoes and waterspouts, while others had scorching heat and relentless dust.  We had spits and spurts of rain, lightning and thunder.  The wind was our constant friend.  Despite it all, the lettuce and spinach in the raised beds are content and growing, and the tomatoes are doing their best, even with the low of 37 degrees Fahrenheit this morning.

This morning's blog is a reflection of the need to seek gentleness in nature.  I find these three images particularly easy on the eyes and soul.  The first is a shot of columbines near Taos Ski Valley.

I never tire of viewing grass collecting dew.

water lily at Sunrise Springs, south of Santa Fe

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

celebrations

Passover, Easter, spring, birthdays, snow, births, passings.  All things that we humans celebrate.  Nature opens and gives us gifts with which to commemorate, such as these narcissus.

In the first photograph, snow is apparent in the lower right hand corner, a welcome sight on the dry mesa.

As a photographer, I have always appreciated even overcast for shooting environmental portraits, but that same sky is also excellent for flower closeups, providing a most interesting backdrop.

Thanks to Ingrid and Robert for these lovely spring surprises!

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

Valentine's Day, part deux

You know me well enough by now that you also are aware of the fact that almost anything you give me will often be photographed in some fashion, and that some of those photographs will appear on my Monday blog.  So this morning, I lift my glass to Cristina and Ben who brought a lovely flower arrangement when they came for brunch last week.

Despite their size and perhaps because of it, the Gerber daisies are the most delicate, and I knew they would need to be photographed first.  Here they are in all their glory.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

More ways to photograph wedding flowers

Continuing the theme of last week's blog, here are more images which show how the art of flower arranging and decoration can be photographed.

There is nothing like a room with sheer white curtains to diffuse light, and to reflect and bounce light back into a subject.

The signs on the table are a nice touch, but notice the business card on each napkin.  Attached is a flash drive containing all the songs the DJ played at the reception.  A Silicon Valley trend coming to New Mexico, no doubt, in the not-too-distant future.

The "roundness" of the arrangement below is made so much more intriguing by the types of flowers and greenery used, reaching out to just about everyone at the table.

Amidst the beauty provided by Mo Wilson of Perfect Parties by Mo shown in this blog, it is good to remember what this date in history means.  This text was included in a recent Veterans for Peace blog.

"Congressional Act (52 Stat.351: 5U.S. Code, Sec.87a) approved May 13, 1938, made November 11^th of each year a legal Federal Holiday,“A day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day’.”

The ceasefire on the, “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918 along the European Western Front was such a relief to all those involved as the world had never seen such horror and carnage as World War I. The horrible conflict that had come to be known as the “War to End War” brought the bulk of humanity to contemplate abolishing war."

Thanks to the veterans of any conflict, and those veterans of peacemaking, who are frequently one and the same. 

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

Let me count the ways....

Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the Sonnets from the Portuguese wrote "How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways."  Flowers have come to represent love - the many ways in which they are arranged, the types and colors of flowers used, and their placement in any given scene - speak volumes.  Arranging is an art form, and an enormous part of the personalized wedding plan.

At our niece's October wedding, I photographed the decorations and flowers.  The bride, her mother, and Maureen Ward, owner of Perfect Parties by Mo in Auburn, California, collaborated to create one of the most stunning wedding backdrops I have seen or photographed.  For the next couple of blogs, I will feature some of the photographs, as I try to count the different ways arrangements and decorations can be created and photographed.

The colors the bride chose are eye popping and worked stunningly together, and the use of paper lanterns complimented the existing architectural elements brilliantly.

The bouquet in the bride's hand, featuring a grandfather's pin and her ring.

"Mo" made sure each surface, even portico walls, were decorated.  Here, red carnations were placed in small containers holding banana leaves at the base, and separated by white votive candles.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

August recess

President Obama is on holiday this week at Martha's Vineyard, members of Congress are on their August recess, and many are headed to the mountains or beach.  But some students are already preparing for the school year, and the plant world takes no holiday.  Some plants are just now joining the color parade.  Sunflowers line the highways, along with skyrocket gilia and assorted penstemons, and gaillardia.  Everyone who is growing greens and lettuce knows that this is their season in the high country.

So kudos this week to the miracle of nature and the edibles that seemingly pop out of the ground to nourish us and add beauty to the world.

Flashy trout's back lettuce

Sunflower

Basil

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

spread the love

As I write this, millions, perhaps billions of people are celebrating the Chinese New Year, the year of the snake.  Joined with Mardi Gras/Carnival on Tuesday and Valentine's Day on Thursday, revelry is underway in every nook and cranny of the planet.  With luck, a lot of love will spread around the world.

The gentleness of the rose, whether in petal or bud form,  is a universal sign of love and celebration.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion of the image

A Tale of Two Flowers

Members of the Solanaceae or nightshade family are very familiar New World plants that, over the centuries, spread like wildfire to every point on the globe, thanks to the human need to explore and move. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tobacco are all part of this broad family, as are several hallucinogens and toxins, including Atropa belladonna or deadly nightshade.

Nightshades are grown all over New Mexico as crops (where would we be without chile?), but there are at least eight that I know of growing in disturbed or sandy soil, along roadsides and in fields.  One of them, sacred Datura (Datura innoxia), has large, impressive trumpet-like flowers.  The Datura below was exceptionally well-watered at Los Poblanos Historic Inn.  The pale lavender edges and "teeth" on the edges are distinctive characteristics of the datura flower.

Incongruous as it seems, the plant that produces such large, showy flowers, grows in the same area as Artemisia tridentata, or big sagebrush.  Most people see big sage after the sage green leaves have been rolled into smudge sticks.  But as a member of Asteraceae or sunflower family, it, too, has blossoms.  Unless the monsoon season is good, however, one might not even see the clusters of brilliant yellow-green blossoms that cascade and pop with pollen.

Two completely different plants, growing in what most gardeners consider unsuitable or junky soil but producing such stunning results.  

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

Lotus dreams

Every day provides a learning experience.  Every time I have my camera in hand I learn something.  That is one of the great joys of photography.

On Friday morning, I did some shooting at Los Poblanos Historic Inn and Organic Farm in the north valley of Albuquerque.  The inn was, at one time, the residence of Congressman Albert Simms and his wife, Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms.  Their home and accompanying buildings, including "La Quinta" sports complex and cultural center, were designed by architect John Gaw Meem.  He is credited with the revival of pueblo architecture, known now as Santa Fe style.  Built in the 1930s, the buildings reflect the care for quality and detail that is sometimes lacking in today's construction.  There are murals by WPA artists, and work by other artists, including carved doors and mantels by Gustave Baumann, a fresco by Peter Hurd, and photography by Laura Gilpin.  Photographs of the broad architecture and details will appear in future blogs.

But naturally, I gravitated first to the grand menagerie of peacocks, chickens, goats, pigs, and dogs that are so crucial to this working farm.  And then there is the lotus pond.  A dream world.  Lotus plants rise high above the water unlike the water lilly which rests on the water's surface.  Although the bloom had already occurred, the pods and leaves are works of art in themselves.

It is also interesting to see how the color of objects change almost immediately when exposed to brighter sunlight.  The first two were made under overcast skies.  In the image below, the morning sun came blasting through, accentuating the yellow in the leaves.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

along the highway

The season of gold has begun in the southern Rocky Mountains.  Snakeweed, sunflowers and other assorted members of the Asteraceae (sunflower) family dot the earth and fill the borrow ditches along highways.  Even in our land of little rain, it is always astonishing to see how big sunflowers become, courtesy of highway runoff.  In the University of Wyoming field guide Weeds of the West, the common sunflower is described as an annual, growing from one to ten feet tall.  I have seen some that are at least six feet tall.  Pretty decent for a short growing season and fairly dry conditions.  And there is nothing like that New Mexico gold against a brilliant summer sky.

The light and shadow on the interior of these sunflowers seems almost edible to me.

I will be keeping my eyes peeled along the highways.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

Poppy moon

There are blue moons, harvest moons, new moons and full moons.   In North America, there is a name for each month's moon.  Because of that, I will take liberties and name June's (normally "honey moon") the "poppy moon" because poppies are having a massive and most gaudy bloom in northern New Mexico this year.

The garden poppy comes in a wonderful array of colors, but I tend to think of them as big as my fist, and bold and bright and red.  Georgia O'Keefe also comes to mind.  This week's images are of some exceptionally beautiful poppies in Buf's Talpa Garden.  My thanks to him for growing them.

  

The heart of the matter

I generally don't think in terms of poppies in black and white but here is one treatment that seems to work well.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

out of chaos...

...come the most beautiful things.  My assignment this week was to sit or lay flat on the ground without encountering a rattlesnake or being stung by any number of creatures living in the sagebrush, to photograph the paintbrush.  Due to a late and very wet snowfall, these members of the figwort family (genus Castilleja) are appearing in abundance out of the chaos of sagebrush skeletons and still-dormant grasses, as if a painter carrying a bucket of red paint tripped and caught himself just in the nick.

I think of paintbrush as being a very deep red, but in actuality, most of the species here are a red orange. Occasionally, I will see one that is almost a blue red in its depth, but those are unusual, and are most common in the high mountain terrain.

As chaos theorists know, some of the most fascinating things emerge from the stew that is life.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image

pieces make the whole

Nearly four weeks beyond the vernal equinox, evidence of spring is becoming more apparent on a daily basis.  Even at elevations above 7,000 feet, fruit trees and bulbs, both wild and domestic, are beginning to bloom, leaving behind a riot of color and textures.

Daffodil bulbs are some of the first to emerge from the ground, blooming soon after.  The bits and pieces that comprise the daffodil flower are today's study.

Life presents endless opportunities for photography at any place or any time, but in the spring, the increased daylight and warmth raise the spirit.  It is a great and varied time to take your camera out and discover the world again.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image