Showing posts with label flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flowers. Show all posts

Monday, October 12, 2015

Spring Twenty Fifteen

Spring is...

the season after winter and before summer
in which vegetation begins to appear
in the northern hemisphere from March to May and 
in the southern hemisphere from September to November...


...and is an explosion of colours all round us, from pastel hues to strong contrast purples and reds.



Someone who's very happy Spring has come round




Every Spring we look forward to the tulips festival "The Floriade" held in Canberra and it didn't disappoint...tulips of all shades and shapes were blooming at their best when we visited accompanied by a few other florals but the tulips were definitely the star...by the end of my visit I had seen enough tulips to last me till next year or beyond.


The Floriade without the ferris wheel wouldn't be The Floriade






From pastels to burgundy... 





And as always I always love to process some to outside of it's natural state...



...to end Spring with some abstracts that I just love...





...hope you are unlike me and can breeze through Spring without a sneeze or itchy eye.

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Sunday, September 27, 2015

Bridge Walk with my No. 2

22nd September 2015

Harbour Bridge view from Kirribilli.

Okay so the Spring term break is upon us once again, I hadn't even gotten back into the routine of the kids being back to school after their Winter break and here we are, the holiday cycle is in motion again.

This holiday No. 2 asked if we could walk across the bridge this holidays and I was more than happy to oblige {more photo ops for moi}, as long as we did the flat one and not the arched one.  The weather is always a little unforgiving when it comes to holidays especially the two mid year breaks, we got lucky this time, we went the first Monday and the weather turned on a great show for us {the rest of the week was a little wet, cold and windy...to say the least}.  This was my second time on the bridge walk it's easy enough, we went at a slow {and constantly stopping for pics} pace taking twenty minutes to the reach the suburb of Kirribilli on the other side.  Easy enough for us to think "oh maybe we can walk the return trip as well"... but we chose the other scenic mode of transport, the ferry ... which took all of five minutes to cross the harbour.


So this is the arched way of walking across the bridge.

No. 2 enjoying the view from up high

The scenic route via the harbour ferry

Lots of activity happening on the harbour with
Fort Denison in the background

Food is the first thing in our minds when we stepped of the north side of the bridge... it was closing in on lunch time, we walked around the two streets bordering the Milsons Point train station {which was also one of our options for getting back to the other side}...we settled into a quaint little place set back in a quiet street called "Cool Mac", a Japanese fusion cafe, quickly being asked by the owner "oh so where are you from?"...a common question that gets asked of us Aussie Chinese in which we reply with a quick "oh we're just {boringly} from Sydney".  The food was a fusion of Japanese sauces and dressings with your normal cafe food, no. 2 went with mushroom "oh I love mushrooms" on sour dough and I went with a light Chicken and Salad...happily watered down with no.2's vanilla malt shake and my skim latte.

Mushroom with poached egg on Sour Dough and Chicken Salad
BTW if I could I would've taken this table home with me.

Can't do without one of these most days

I may have said this before but I really do think Sydney Harbour is one of the most beautiful harbours in the world...it is easy to forget but when you get a chance to get out there and enjoy it on a beautiful sunny day...it is a sight to behold when you are looking over the emerald seas from above...it is really quite the gem.

Unsure of what to do when we got off the ferry and not really wanting to end the day we walked over to the big sails of the Opera House and sat on the front steps enjoying her Choc Mint and my Burnt Caramel ice creams from Gelatissimo...giggling at all the tourists with their selfie sticks and checking out the locals like us out with their holidaying children.

With the Botanical Gardens near by we decided to walk through it and catch the bus on the other side of it home...being in the midst of Spring fever there was obviously an ulterior motive on my part to choose this route home...and I wasn't disappointed...


Honey bees are always in abundance when the sweet lavenders are blooming

Poppies never fail to make me smile everytime they bloom...
just love their random pops of colour

No idea what this bloom is but have never seen one before, they seem to have weeds
growing out of the middle of the flower itself

This one of growing out through the iron fence

It's nice to get out with my no. 2, haven't done this in a long while and we both enjoyed it.  As they both grow older it gets harder and harder to find things that they are interested in doing with you...as you noticed it was only no. 2 in this post so you probably guessed my no. 1 is definitely no longer finding this something he would like to do with me anymore...much to my disappointment but we have to accept the changes that happen along the way and to cherish and treasure the little moments that were shared before the changes happened.

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Friday, October 3, 2014

Springtime in Mono

Cloudy 18ºC



Spring has arrived and my hard drive is filling up with this year's new blooms, though I hope it doesn't develop hayfever like many I know including me...wouldn't want any hiccups with it.  

Spring is usually associated with colour and I fully appreciate why...but I like to have other options when playing around with my images...so I thought I would try to convert a few for you, sometimes images will take on a different feel and mood without the distraction of colour getting in the way...although I do have a preference for black and white images at times so I am a little biased, some that don't agree with me and think it is just plain boring...hope these will images will show another side of an image sans colour...

I find that simplicity sometimes works best but high contrast also can work quite positively with black and white...






In saying all of this, with some images I'm so torn between colour or mono that while I'm processing I keep clicking backwards and forwards between colour  & b&w trying to decide which I like better...then end up saving one of each...just like the image below,  by removing the colour I also removed the warmth of the sun but the mono also has a mood that the former doesn't...



But my moto with processing has always been play around with your options because one simple adjustment can be the difference between a good image and a extraordinary one!  Experiment is the key!!!   Happy processing!

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Sunday, September 14, 2014

Spring Is Here

Sunny 23º

Four of my five senses have finally awoken from months of Winter hibernation...I can see it...smell it...feel it...and hear it!  The spots of colour that Spring brings has arrived, the first warmth of the sun that it also brings is most welcome on my vitamin D deprived skin.  Yesterday's Spring rain in the morning brought me hours of glorious photo time...







Nature's jewels brought by the light Spring rain...









Nature brings me so much inspiration especially when it's at it's happiest.
Hope you all enjoy Spring as much me and my camera do...though will need to stock up on the tissues for the season.

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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

A Day in the Life of a Lily

Sunny 35ºC

A day in the life of a Lily…on a fiery hot windy Spring day, the sixth day of our raging bush fires, in several areas, the main one in the beautiful Blue Mountains, the first of the year and it's not even Summer yet.  

Spent twenty minutes in the hot sun with these Bronze Red - Day Lillies, any longer I would've burned to a crisp…as I left the gardener was watering the bushes, had a serious urge to just run under the hose and cool down...  










Their beautiful fiery red colours are so intense and spectacular, they remind me of the raging bushfires.

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