PhotograClare » Ryton Organic Gardens

Lupin Leaf

Clare Topping — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:08:38 +0000

Another shot from Ryton Gardens. Whilst I said in the last post that there is nothing wrong with a plant portrait, there is always that desire to take a slightly (or preferably very) different shot.

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.

Cyclamen

Clare Topping — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 18:08:00 +0000

I love cyclamen. They are so small that you could easily miss them, but look at what you would be missing!

The leaves for a silver and green matt at floor level, and the flower heads form lovely spirals before giving this lovely display, white tinged with a delicate pink – definitely need to put them on my shopping list.

I had to crouch on the fortunately dry and paved floor to get this, even better it was at the edge of the border as I am not sure Ryton Gardens would have appreciate me doing any pruning outside their restaurant windows!

I think this captures the essence of a cyclamen, there is nothing much more I can say – just a lovely plant portrait with a sufficiently subtle background.

Taken with my macro lens, ISO200, f/7.1, 1/125secs.

Colours

Clare Topping — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:14:27 +0000

Last year I took a shot of cransebills amongst the alchemilla mollis at Ryton which I was quite pleased with, but it wasn’t quite right. The composition was not quite there and it was not as sharp as I would have liked. This year I went back.

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.

Poppy

Clare Topping — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

I visited Ryton Gardens yesterday with the sole intention of taking photos (and buying some loose leaf tea). Needless to say I took a lot of photos, many of which have been consigned to the trash bin.

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).