I bought this plant three years ago and planted it in My mom’s garden. This year, for the first time, it sprouted some flowers. Touted as the only two-tone peony one can buy, the blooms were certainly impressive! Hard to go wrong with $3 flowers, but these are particularly gorgeous…
August 19, 2015 | Categories: Photography | Tags: bloom, blooms, blossom, blossoms, bold, color, colors, cream, flower, flowers, garden, gardening, minnesota, multi, peonies, peonnies, peony, pink, plant, plants, pretty, shrub, sorbet, tone, twin cities, two, two-tone, twotone | Leave a comment
December 14, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: close-up, covered, flower, flowers, garden, ice, plant, plants, snow, snowy, winter, yellow | Leave a comment
I bought a set of screw on macro filters to play with. I was buying an intervalometer to enter in to time lapse photography and adding the filters to the order made it qualify for free shipping, for cheaper than the shipping cost. At twelve dollars, this four piece set made by AGFA is a steal! They simply screw on a lens like a UV, or polarizing filter and allow You to get physically closer to what You are trying to shoot. Not without a hitch though. This 77mm set has been mated to my Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 OS to reduce the minimum focus distance from three and a half feet, down to eight to twelve inches with the +4. The extreme curve of the +4 and +10 filters, dramatically reduces the amount of light intake. So You are pretty much required to shoot in full sun light. On My first try, I used a portable L.E.D. to augment the fading evening light. It worked okay, not great though.
Over the weekend, I was musing pretty hard on My friends garden, so I popped on the +4 filter and had a go in full sun light. The filter reduced the depth of field to nearly nothing. I had to run very tight apertures to get a range of one inch into focus. Using shutter speeds of 125ths, to 400ths of a second, with apertures from 16-22 and My ISO at 400 and 800 in broad daylight was very odd. It did yield some rewards, at a better ratio than the first time, but still only 1 in every 15 shots was acceptable. Half of those were still not quite sharp, but I think I am getting the hang of using these things. Who would have thought that a $12 set of filters could turn a telephoto lens into decent macro shooting optics. It is not as good as buying a 200mm macro lens, but at one, or two percent of the price, WOW. None of the images in this post have been cropped…
!
August 4, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: +10, +2, +4, 1, 200mm, 70mm, 77mm, agfa, aperture, beautiful, bee, bees, beetle, beetles, best option, bloom, blooming, blooms, blossom, blossoming, blossoms, bought on amazon, bumble, bumblebee, burrowing, center, cheap, cheap option, close, close-up, collection, color, colorful, coloring, colors, contrast, core, daylight, eating, exoskeleton, filter, filters, flower, flowering, flowers, fur, furry, fuzzy, garden, gardens, grazing, image, images, img, instect, iridescent, japanese, kit, lens, lenses, light, lighting, lights, macro, middle america, midwest, minnesota, mn, nectar, nice, no coating, no cropping, no multi-coating, oppo moto, oppomoto, petal, petals, photo, photograph, photographic, photos, pic, pics, picture, pictures, pink, pistil, pistils, plant, plants, pollen, pollenating, pretty, range, salmon, see, sharp, shell, shoot, shooting, shot, shots, shutter, sigma 70-200mm, speed, sun, sunlight, twin cities, view, wing, wings, without cropping, yard, yellow, zinnia, zoom | Leave a comment
July 6, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: afternoon, bloom, blooming, blooms, blossom, blossoms, bold, bright, close, close-up, deck, dog, dogs, double, female, flower, flowers, focus, friendly, garden, green, grey, layers, macro, middle america, midwest, minn, minnesota, mn, patio, petal, petals, photo, photographer, photography, picture, pictures, pig, pigglestein, piggums, pink, pit, pit bull, pitbull, plant, plants, pollen, potted, range, red, summer, sunny, two-tone, up, yard, yellow, zinnia, zinnias, zoom | Leave a comment
June 19, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: annuals, backyard, bald face, bald faced, bee, bees, biodegrading, bloom, blooming, blossom, blossoms, brown, bunches, cedar, close-up, cluster, clusters, collecting, colorful, day time, door frame, fading, fence, flower, flowers, flying, garden, gathering, green, honey bee, hornet, hornets, insect, insects, knot, lantana, layers, magenta, midwest, minnesota, nectar, old, photo, photograph, photographer, photos, picture, pictures, pine, pink, plant, plants, pollen, potted, purple, remnants, rotted, saint paul, st paul, stump, symetry, tree, twin cities, weathered, white, wing, wings, wood, wooden, worker, yard, yellow, zoom | Leave a comment
I Headed upstream to hang out with a good friend. We spent most of the day walking around Nicollet Island and down to the dam at Saint Anthony Falls. It made Me realise just how long it has been since I walked miles and miles with no set destination. This was such a large part of My teenage years, suddenly it feels like a lost part of who I am has been rediscovered. Unlike in the past when I was up to various mischievous activities, now I carry a camera. Let’s see where this goes.
May 26, 2014 | Categories: Photography, Random Thoughts | Tags: 2014, 3rd, 3rd ave, andor, andor2000, andorius, angle, angles, arch, architecture, avenue, balance, bench, bend, beneath, bicycle, bike, bird house, birdhouse, bloom, blooming, blooms, blossoms, bridge, bridges, bright, buildings, cast, center, centered, central, central ave, chair, chairs, city, color, colors, concrete, county, current, currents, dam, dock, docks, door way, doorway, down, down town, downstream, downtown, falls, fence, flour, flower, flowers, flowing, foam, gold medal, gold metal, gravel, heading, hennepin, hennepin county, high capacity, historic, island, light, lighting, lines, lock, looking, man-made, manmade, may, metal, middle america, midwest, minneapolis, minnesota, mississippi, mississippi river, mist, mn, mpls, nicollet, nicollet island, north america, north star blankets, park, parks, path, pathway, patina, peeling paint, photograph, photographer, picket, picture, pictures, plant, plants, power, recreation, reflecting, reflection, river, river rd, river road, rivets, rushing, rust, rusty, saint anthony, shadows, shapes, span, spanning, spray, spring, st anthony falls, st. anthony, stair, stairs, stairway, steel, stone, stone arch, street, streets, stroll, structure, structures, sunny, symetrical, symetry, table, through, tower, towers, town, tracks, trail, tree, trees, turn, twin cities, twincities, under, underneath, upstream, urban, walk, walkway, wall, walls, water, waterfall, waves, way, white water, wood, wooden | Leave a comment
May 23, 2014 | Categories: Photography | Tags: .jpg, 2014, backyarrd, beautiful, beauty, bloom, blooming, blooms, bold, bright, center, color, colored, coloring, colors, contrast, flower, flowering, flowers, garden, gorgeous, green, images, img, leaves, maroon, may, mid-west, middle america, midwest, multiple, natural, nature, orange, petal, petals, photo, photos, picture, pictures, pink, plant, planted, plants, plum, pretty, purple, shot, soil, spring, stem, streaked, streaks, stripe, sunlight, sunny, three, tulip, tulips, twin cities, yard, yellow | Leave a comment
Last year, I tried growing a variety of tomato called Cherokee Purple. Sadly, last year, spring was quite late and I had a pathetic harvest of one tomato, as noted in the post on this site called ‘Love at First Spite.’ This year I tried them again. Much like the previous year, spring was late, but I got them planted about 2 weeks earlier than before. Thankfully, I have a lot more to eat this time around. Varying in size from 3 to 6 and a half inches across, they have grown in such thick clusters that I’ve had to do a large amount of thinning to prevent rot, due to over crowding. The key to these tomatoes is the taste. They are simply better than most, if not all of the other varieties available. Even the under-ripe 6 inch 1.7 pounder pictured below is tastier than any other tomato I’ve ever grown, or gotten from a grocery store. I never thought I would actually like tomatoes, but I do now… Thank goodness some plants will still give us seeds that will grow into more food.
September 9, 2013 | Categories: Photography, Random Thoughts | Tags: best, cherokee, dark, early, food, fresh, garden, grew, heirloom, homegrown, images, juicy, large, meaty, picked, pictures, plant, purple, red, ripe, robust, seeds, slice, sliced, tomato, tomatoes, under-ripe, yummy | Leave a comment
I bought this indoor friendly vine three years ago, along with My first citrus trees. It pumps out interesting orange-red flowers that do indeed roughly resemble dolphins jumping out of the water. Plentiful amounts of two and a half inch long blooms have come in waves every few months the whole time I’ve had it. At first, it was just two, four inch branches. After about a year, I re-potted the vine, proceeding to drop it and break off two-thirds of the delicate branches. Left with only one, six inch branch, I got it situated and let it grow. Then, one day I came home from work and found My lovely, quite fragile vine, top down and pot up on the floor. Presumably sliding off its perch on a stool due to vibrations from the construction crews updating the 55-100+ year old sewers and water lines along My street. Again, all but one twelve inch branch had broken off the vine. This time, I gave the broken off bits to My Mom, which she rooted in water and has now potted two of these plants, a little larger than the one I got from the nursery to start with. In the 6 months since the last tumble, a couple new sprouts are coming from the base of the mother plant, but the lone remaining arm of the vine has more than doubled its size. Pictured here is that vine, now 2 feet long and a shot of the parts that were broken off, but are now rooted and growing just fine on their own. This plant should be a mainstay in My living room for many years to come. Such a neat variety of flowers to have around the house.
June 2, 2013 | Categories: Photography, Random Thoughts | Tags: best, bloom, blooming, branching, dancing, different, dolphin, dolphins, flower, flowering, flowers, garden, good, image, images, indoor, inside, jumping, leaping, photo, plant, plants, potted, pretty, prolific, red, vine | Leave a comment
August 6, 2012 | Categories: Photography | Tags: around the yard, bloom, blooming, blooms, flower, flowers, garden, plant, purple, white | Leave a comment
Back for More... 