American lotus

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Nikon D850, Nikkor 105mm micro

Waterlilies in Nashville

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Yay! Another stamp with the USPS!

I’m a USPS stamp artist three years in a row with this announcement. Pretty exciting stuff! My image is one of the 16 featured in this release. They announce one release per day and this was the 11th stamp announced. The entire National Park Forever stamp series debuts June 2 and will be available in post offices nationwide.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

My waterlily stamps debut in March!

Look what I just found! The Garfield-Perry March Party stamp show will host the First Day Ceremony for my four waterlily FOREVER stamps on Friday, March 20 at 11:00 am. The show is March 19-21 in Cleveland, Ohio. Guess who’s planning a road trip to Cleveland in March?

http://www.linns.com/news/breaking-stamp-news/1049/Special-Olympics-Robert-Robinson-Taylor-Martin-Ramirez-stamps-to-be-issued-in-2015

Drumroll, please—more USPS stamps coming!

The USPS just posted a sneak preview today of my waterlily stamps on their Facebook page! The stamps will be available in booklet form at post offices country-wide sometime in 2015. Read more about the waterlily stamps here: http://uspsstamps.com/stamps/water-lilies

Sacred Lotus bud

Sacred Lotus bud, photographed at Green Spring Gardens this afternoon.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

 

Sacred Lotus

Sacred Lotus, photographed at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Sacred Lotus

Sacred Lotus, photographed at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in Washington, D.C. 

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Water lily

Water lily photographed at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, TX

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Tropical Water Lily ‘Panama Pacific’

(Nymphaea) Tropical Water Lily ‘Panama Pacific’, photographed at Brookside Gardens. Look at the upper left (top) petal—see the tiny stowaway damselfly? I didn’t notice it until I zoomed in on the image in Photoshop!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

From the archives: Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens

A sampling of photos taken at Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens over the past few years

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Lily pads

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Lotus leaf

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Blue Dasher Dragonfly

I was fervently hoping to get some shots of the dragonflies yesterday at Kenilworth, but they were very active and rarely settled long enough for me to photograph them. It was getting hotter and I was just about to give up. I set my tripod down to rest and something compelled me to look to my immediate left—a little more than a foot away from my head, at eye level, was a Blue Dasher (the fella in the second photo) clinging to a bare branch sticking out of the pond. I moved really, really slowly and was able to fire off about a dozen shots before he dashed away.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Pair of Water Lilies

Water Lily

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shade of the sky are mine;
it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal—
in the rhythm of my daily soul
I do not desire—I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors…

—Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Bumblebee on Water Lily

Hey, this is a nice angle…lemme crop out that brown leaf on the left…and now wait until the sun goes behind that cloud…mmmm…nice and graphic…black, white, green, yellow pop in the center…let’s try a vertical…focus, click, view screen…nah, horizontal is better…focus, click, view screen, change aperture, focus, click, refocus, click, click…now if only a dragonfly would land right smack in the middle…then it would be perfect…oooh, oooh, a bumblebee!…quick, refocus, click! Just one shot before he buzzed away, but here it is. (Cropping it as a square made for a more dynamic image in this case.)

Ode Tae a Bumble Bee

Wee hoverin’, fleein’ ferlie fello’,
Wi’ yer stripes o’ black and yello’,
Yer ever sae bonnie, so ye ur,
Like a spring lamb—only smaller and withoot the fur,
But see if ye ever sting me oan the bum again,
Ah’m gonnae jump on yer heid so Ah um.

—Stuart McLean (from No’ Rabbie Burns)

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Water Lilies

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Blue Dasher Dragonfly

The Dragonfly

Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1833

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Dragonfly on Lotus bud

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.