I really enjoyed the process of creating this image. The plant itself grows prodigiously well in our garden, without any help at all from us. The fun of the high key background and the photography and simple photoshop work produces a result which gives me a great deal of pleasure.

These three plants inhabit the shady and not-so-shady places in our garden. Ground elder, dandelion and bluebells.

Not sure if you can see it, but a short distance above the ‘h’ at the end of the watermark is a tiny egg. This belongs to the Orange Tip butterfly. Soon a tiny black-headed catterpillar will squeeze its way out. The plant was blowing about too much in the breeze so I think I could manage a clearer shot.

I wrote on Instagram: ‘Looking so closely at my objects of interest. A great pleasure to simply look at these flowers, Lizianthus, from different angles in the light until a composition became clear. Wanting depth of field led to stacking, but more than that wanting to have a sense of the petals and the form of the blooms.
Many thanks to those of you who so often comment on my work it is much appreciated.’

It does feel good to write about what I have spent so long doing. To publish to Instagram can give a feeling of completeness at times. I think that I tend to reserve more detail for this blog. I am lucky to have this site to show my work and musings. The first shot is the one I put on Instagram, cropped to 4:5 format. The second is the complete - well the word I want to use is portrait - portrait of the stems. The leaves are visible at the foot of the photograph.

They seem to greet each other reaching across the generation each thinking I was once there. I am not sure the black and white should be second …

Finally managed to get a few shots of my daughter playing her cello and some close up photos of her fingers at work. When she saw it on Instagram she remarked that she had such a bad thumb. I took this to mean that she realised her technique needed improvement. Sounded good to me.

Herb Robert is a small geranium plant growing wild in hedgerows (and our garden which is where I found this one). The flower is about 14mm across the five petals. Tiny pollen grains were falling from the stamens and some fell on the paper. To reach this depth of field my #nikon 105mm lens was set to f11 and I stacked eight of the photographs I took. What an exquisite little flower with colours that jump right out at you. I am not sure if this is visible in the JPEG for social media, but at the end of each hair is a little reddish globe.

Bluebells horizontally across water in our north-facing kitchen. Looking closely you can see the surface bearing the weight of the flower heads on the meniscus The surface tension can support a light object so that it is not afloat but on top of the water. Which reminds me of the double crested basilisk, the ‘Jesus Lizard’, which walks on water! There is a fuller photo on the landing page currently.

There is great satisfaction in crisply rendering an image of such a beautiful little plant in flower I find. Often they are seen in photographs as a mass underneath budding trees in glowing morning beams or dappled shade. The humble bluebell is worth a close look. I have been using my Nikon 105mm and in some cases stacking my shots for greater depth of field. It’s the way that light reveals the form and detail that produces an enjoyable photograph for me. I would be interested in your thoughts questions or comments on this shot.

I think I understand why Poirot finds these so enticing. It looks really crunchy - I should explain Poirot is our rabbit and when the season allows he has dandelions in his diet. There is a clue to the making of this picture in the bottom left hand corner where the glass holding the flower is just about in view.