Peonies

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved. Nikon D850 / Nikkor 105mm micro

 

Visual overload: Love-in-a-mist and peonies

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Love-in-a-mist and peonies

Lovely love-in-a-mist (Nigella damscena) against a backdrop of a cluster of deep pink-red peonies

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

‘Cora Louise’ peony

And here’s a giant peony—first time I’ve seen this one at Green Spring. The blooms were the size of salad plates!

UPDATE 5/1/2018: Special thanks to Lisa Jackson (she runs the store at Green Spring Gardens’ Horticultural Center) for the identification on this beautiful peony. It’s an “itoh” (intersectional hybrid) peony named ‘Cora Louise.’

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

 

Pow!

Here’s a little tip to achieve this bright punch of color in the background: I had my Nikon D800 with my Nikkor 105mm micro lens on a tripod and the peony framed and focused for my composition. I held my tri-grip translucent diffuser between the sun and the peony, but I let the background to the left be illuminated by the sun—that made the green pop against this hot pink peony. Sometimes I’ll diffuse the flower and the background but in this case, that background of lime green lit by the sun is just what I needed to make this image pop!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Another lovely Peony…

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Peony ‘Cytherea’

Peony (Paeonia ‘Cytherea’)

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Check out my zenfolio.com gallery!

I’ve been working on putting the “cream of the crop” of my garden and landscape photos into one easy-to-navigate gallery. Eventually I’ll have the gallery set up to sell prints as well as stock photos, but in the interim, this is just a way to wrangle all of my web-viewing-only images into one gallery. I’ll be adding more images in the future. Currently there are 380 images in the Botanical Gallery. That should keep you plenty busy! If you’re a regular visitor to my blog, you’ll recognize many of the photos.

Once you click on the first link below, you can click “view all” at the bottom and see everything on one page, scrolling down as you go. If you click on an individual photo, it will enlarge and thumbnails for other images will show up on the side (as shown in the collage below). You can click on any of those to enlarge, or you can just launch the slide show in the second link below. I hope you enjoy the show!

Gallery:  http://cindydyer.zenfolio.com/p270076135

Slideshow: http://cindydyer.zenfolio.com/p270076135/slideshow

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Open a Zenfolio account with my referral code 8B9-BTJ-6G3 and save $5.00

Same time, last year

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

Like a kid in a candy store…

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.   www.cindydyer.com/GardenPhotos

Glorious day

This morning Michael and Carmen and I headed to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond (http://www.lewisginter.org/) to see the “million blooms.” The weather was perfect and although it was a little windy (tulips waving in the breeze are a wonderful sight!), I still managed to get some good photos in between gusts of wind. As I suspected she would, Carmen fell in love with their amazing garden shop. I’ve been to a lot of garden gift shops and Lewis Ginter outshines them all! They have a wide assortment of garden sculptures, fountains, art, knick-knacks, aprons, hats, t-shirts, scarves, umbrellas, benches, gazebos, trellises, stakes, seeds, plant markers, tools, a great selection of books and instrumental garden music CDs, containers of all kinds, gorgeous garden-themed jewelry, home decor (plates/vases/teapots & cups), and lots of things for kids. We shopped as soon as we got to the garden, then went out to photograph, had lunch, photographed some more, then came back and shopped again. These are some plant “portraits” I shot there today.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.