A few weeks ago these were just in bud, the weather was gloomy and I had no chance of hand holding a camera attached to my macro lens.  Then the sun came out.  I like the shape of the petals and the richness of the purple contrasting with the yellow of the centre.  They are the very essence of spring.

The settings on the camera were 1/500secs at f/7.1 with the aforementioned macro lens attached at ISO200.

I was tidying up the garden on Saturday and discovered this cyclamen hidden by hellebore leaves.  I liked the coppery coloured stems and the tightly would spirals.  I also like the contrast of the new growth and green leaves of the cyclamen against the grey-brown of the clematis leaf that the spiral is resting on.

I left the edges of the cyclamen in the picture to put a bit of context in and make it more obvious what the subject was.  As it is winter my 50mm lens is on the camera and the settings used were ISO200, 1/250secs at f/2.0 (the wide aperture used to make the subject stand out a bit more from the background).

Instead of taking a picture of the lupin flowers (although I sort of did that as well- picture on Flickr ) I decided to take a picture of the leaf.

The in-your-face nature of the flowers means that the leaves are often overlooked – I have never taken a photo of them before (although I haven’t taken one of the flowers either so that just means that I don’t have any in my garden), but they are so architectural.  Just look at the shape, they seem very precise and neat, and get slowly darker from the centre to the edge.

As I was in Ryton then my macro lens came as standard, settings were ISO200, 1/125 secs, f/10.

Well, not much because all of the grass appears to have cut and therefore most of the flowers, fungi etc.  It also seems to be too cold for the insects at 8am, and, who can blame them.

I meandered slowly, took pictures of autumn leaves etc, but this is my favourite from the hour long session.

Dandelions can be such fantastically photogenic subjects.  The thing that I liked about this was the shape of the stem which just gave it an added dimension.

Unfortunately the light wasn’t too bright and neither was I, so instead of upping my ISO to 400 I took this at ISO200, f/5.0, 1/125 secs with my macro lens which is why the lovely stem is not as sharp as it could be.  Other than that, I am pretty happy with this.

I wanted the focus of this to be the centre of the flower, but rather than zooming right in I also wanted to show the petals to get that extra colour.

For a change there is nothing I would alter about this picture – it has come out just how I wanted it to.

Taken with my EOS400D, Canon 100mm macro lens at ISO200, 1/160secs at f/5.0.

The composition of the main flower is just right, it sits in the right place in the frame, the hoverfly is sharp enough as is the centre of the flower.  The background is blurred enough that I don’t think the green interferes with the photo.  No, that is all OK, the thing that is not right is the other flower.  I am happy that it is blurred and its position in the picture, almost a reflection of the main flower.  What makes me unhappy is that it is chopped off at the bottom.  OK, I was the person that chopped it off at the bottom, but it was better than the alternative which was an array of incredibly distracting foliage!

This was taken handheld on my EOS400D with Macro lens, at ISO200, 1/125secs at f/10.

However, there are a lot of great plant photographers out there that I don’t think I could ever rival, so I concentrate on pictures of plants that are nearby and am trying to take more abstract and close up shots.

This is the same pine that featured in one of my most  abstract photos of about six months ago.  This time my eye was caught first of all by a small water droplet, then by the light on the needles at the edge of the shot.  I also liked the fact that it refused to be buffeted by the blustery breeze that made all the other plants impossible to photograph.

In essence I think that this photo, especially compared with the more abstract shot, shows a different facet of the plant.  There is the glaucous, subdued colour of the small cone and the fresher green of the needles, particularly when many plants were starting to look a little parched.  Unlike many conifers this is quite a soft needled, tactile plant which is one of the reasons that I bought it, and I think that comes through in the picture.

The picture was taken with a macro lens, handheld, ISO200, 1/125secs at f/4.0.

Therefore,  I decided to try to find something in the garden.  Last year I planted some parsley in the back garden, it survived the Winter quite happily, but not the heat and is insisting on flowering.  This makes it rubbish as a herb, but more interesting for photography.

I like the shape of umbellifers, they are distinctly architectural.  I also liked the coolness of the green on green.  I have cropped this into a square because it seemed to want it that way.  The shot was handheld with my macro lens, ISO100, 1/160secs at f/9.  If I could change the shot, I would probably go up to ISO200 and get a little more depth of field so the flowers at the front were sharper.

I hadn’t gone with the intention of taking the shot again, indeed I had forgotten about it.  But, once there, the photos were just asking to be taken – who could resist such vibrant, clashing colours.

Camera settings were 1/160secs at f/10, ISO200 on my 100mm macro lens.

However, this is one of my two favourites that I took, I will put the other in a another post this week.

The first thing to catch my eye was the light on the petals.  It was a bright sunny day, so not immediately one for taking great photos.  I like poppies, just because they are so bright and in your face as I think this one shows.  I also like the subtlety of the background which is nicely blurred even though it was such a bright day (I kept the aperture smaller by reducing to ISO100).

The only thing I have done to the picture in Lightroom is put it in a square crop which I think works well with such a simple photograph.

I obviously had my macro lens affixed, with the settings on shutter priority to stop me getting carried away and losing photos to camera shake, so 1/160secs at f/8.0 (handheld as would be expected).