A few more from Longwood...

Doing some office work today catching up on paperwork and filing. : - ( But it has to be done...feeling a little under the weather as well, some cough or cold bug must have taken hold..these shots were also made on Friday at Longwood. The Camellia's are blooming and I think they are one of the most beautiful flowers. The peach ones really got me with their crinkled petals!

This color was my mother's favorite color in the garden, we had roses along the driveway I think they were called "Fashions" at least that's what I remember Dad calling them when he had to prune them or Mom bemoaning when Dad cut them too hard, saying "Your Dad cut the Fashions back too much."  We had tall Gladiola's this color in the summer, mixed with white ones in the garden. Mom was a gardener, an "English" gardener trying to make a garden in our red clay soil and dreadfully hot summers...but she found a way to make it beautiful! So maybe this post is for her. The morning she passed away I was on the highway taking some photos of her to the frame shop for display at the funeral services and I passed an old restored Hot Rod in this exact color heading the other direction on the highway........hmmm......have not seen one since in this color.......

The colors just revealed themselves when I was working there and when I began processing...all these were made with the Nikon 200mm macro coupled with a 52 mm extension tube..my favorite macro hook up. I played with processing them...and here I created a layer for the background filled it with the color I wanted using the color picker and then ran the filled color layer through Snapart2 filter to add some texture to the mat of the images. I also used Photoshop to add the drop shadow and stroke around the image...fun....now back to work!

The background in this shot came into focus when I was looking through the lens and noticed the lower plantings around the Calla Lilies were the same color as the Camellia...so I worked hard to use the out of focus color as a clean background for the Calla.

And I had to take a picture of some orchids, after all that's why I went! But sometimes in the field we see more than what we expect and need to be open to the opportunities.