Garden Plants in Winter

[GeneW]

A few of our garden plants visible above the snow.

Sea Oats


White Aster


Goldenrod


All taken with a Canon 300D, Nikkor 105/2.8 micro (with lens adapter), and tripod

Gene

[John Parry]

Hi Gene,

Noticed this post a few days ago, and meant to come back, but with so much activity on the board I'm afraid I'm very late. Very much like the first one -stark and (the bottom part anyway) crisp. Suspect you could have got a better DOF with this, with nothing to worry about in the background but notwithstanding, I like it very much.

The second one is too sad - nice picture, but the flowers are either too far past their sell-by date, or could have been given a couple of months to totally wrinkle.

The third is superb - the flowers have gone to seed, taking away the sadness in the feel of re-birth. The brown leaves give superb contrast, and the DOF is just right. Good, good, good.

Of the three though, it has to be the first. I'm rubbish at simplicity, but this is masterful.

Thanks for posting these.

Regards - John

[kamera]

I rather like the 'beyond sell date', if you will, as I think the rust color stands out beautifully against the white snow.

It also shows the sturdiness of mother nature's progeny.

Ron Head
Kalamazoo, MI

[luke]

All three are great. I like the selective focus and the "Bokeh" in the second and third shots. We don't have winter here and I'm sorry to say I don't miss it.

Luke

[Rachel]

I love the Sea Oats picture Gene. It's sort of ........ well ..... I just love it

[GeneW]

John, Ron, Luke, Rachel, thanks kindly for looking and replying. We purposefully didn't cut down these plants at end of season in order to provide some winter interest in our garden. It's lucky I took these when the first snow arrived because the weather has gone unseasonably warm since and we've had no more snow. Photographically, I miss the white stuff. I tend to like shallow DOF shots, but I know they're not everyone's cup of tea. The pictorialist tradition likes f/64 and I like f/2.8... though not for everything, of course.

Gene

[luke]

Gene, I'm with you on the shallow DOF shots. One of the things I have learned to appreciate from my NY Institute of phoptography course is the art of isolating and emphasising a subject using DOF. It can produce stunning pictures (As we see from yours!)

Luke