Catching up with flowers

I decided to go back in time this week for Macro Monday and pick some of favorites from the past.  A few are pretty recent and some are several years old.  

A few months ago I was preparing to go out to take some pictures when it started raining.  I delayed a little bit to let it pass and then went to get the "standard" water-on-petal pictures.  Although bordering on cliché, I really liked this one.  The flower is a purple Clematis that my wife has trained along the fence in the front garden.  The whole plant was in bloom creating an explosion of purple.  There was just enough light to highlight the petal while keeping the background quite dark.

 I'm not sure what type of flower this is, my wife is out right now and she is the garden expert, but it has a mound of this white star flowers. [She just returned and told me it is an Amsonia; thanks hon.] Similar to the Clematis above, I like how the limited light highlights the main subject.  I usually don't have the foresight to design that into my photographs but sure appreciate when it happens.  All of the vignetting is natural.

This is a rose bud from a native rose that is growing in our side garden.  The flowers are small, flat flowers but they have a wonderful scent.   If you look closely you can see little spikes coming over the green parts.  I'm sure there are technical terms for the bulge at the bottom of the bud and the covering.  Again, I'm sure my wife would know. I only wish I had caught that the back bud was up against the frame as there was room at the bottom to make a small adjustment.  I was probably just being careless.  Or this might be a good reason to use a tripod.  I don't remember if I did or not.  But I find that when handholding the camera it tends to drop slightly when I press the shutter button.  I have less of a problem with my DSLR but I went through a period where I was constantly cutting things off  at the top of the frame with my point-and-shoot camera.  I have a wonderful picture from Brussels of a full moon breaking through clouds behind St. Katherine's church that is partially ruined by having too much of the surrounding square and not the top of the steeple. 

 This native Columbine was taken last year on a trip to the Shenandoah Mountains. It was terribly foggy all weekend so I didn't get any mountain landscape pictures like I had hoped for but I was able to get a few good flowers and some great mushrooms.  

And finally this pink Poppy is from our front garden.  The year of  this photo we had a lot of poppies growing in this bed.  They looked really good with the Chamomile behind it.  Over the past couple of years they have been losing out to larkspurs.  I like the paper-thin petals of the poppies.  And the buds are quite cool in their own right.  The flowers come from large buds that grow up on tall, but thin, stems.  The stem hooks over letting the bud just hang there until it is ready to open.  And then everything stands upright and you get beautiful flowers like this.

I hope you have a great week and be sure to check out the other photos are Monday Macro.