When I started shooting regularly two years ago, I followed the lead of my mentor, Cindy Dyer, who specializes in flower photography, and spent a lot of time in gardens. (She photographs a wide range of subjects, though, and I encourage readers to click on her name and check out the photos on her blog from a recent trip to Iceland.)
Last weekend I went back to my roots and visited a local garden with Cindy, where I spent some time with flowers and was only occasionally distracted by insects. Cindy helped me identify a toad lily and some zinnias, but we think the yellow flower is some kind of rudbeckia.
As I was shooting, I was particularly fascinated by the structure and patterns of the petals and by the amazing colors. The colors proved to be a challenge to render correctly and I am not entirely certain that I got the pinkish color of the zinnias true to life.
If you are viewing the original posting (and not it the Reader), click on any one of the thumbnail images to see the images in succession in larger size in slide show format. (I am still experimenting with using the Gallery options for displaying multiple images.)
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- Rudbeckia
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- Zinnia
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- Spherical zinnia
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- Toad lily
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
I too am fascinated by flower structure. I myself shoot many flowers, but I still prefer an insect sitting on one. Very nice flower portraits Mike. The gallery feature just got an update by WP and is having problems. They are trying to fix the issues and I hope they do. I added the gallery because a photo thief cannot drag an image to the desktop.
I started out shooting flowers and a few insects and then gradually shifted to insects and a few flowers. It’s sad and disappointing that you have to worry about people stealing your images, but I guess that it’s the reality we have to deal with.
You might look into it too. I lose about 100 a day and on a bad day I have lost 500 of them. There used to be a way to tell how many were downloaded, but that feature is now unavailable or changed in name.
Great pics! Lately I’ve been taking a lot of pictures of wildflowers and weeds, and even these much maligned flowers are quite beautiful up close. I guess that just goes to show that anything can be beautiful at the right distance.
Thanks. I have trouble distinguishing between flowers and weeds, so I’ll shoot anything that catches my eye. At close range, most of them are incredibly beautiful.
Lovely photos. the link is slightly broken but I quickly worked out it is http://cindydyer.wordpress.com/ and is worth the effort.
Thanks, Bruce. Apparently the link that I put in (without the http://) defaulted to something change. I need to remember to check the links to ensure they are working before I publish the posting.
It looks like the colors are pretty accurate. You had nice lighting that day, by the looks.
Thanks. It was heavily overcast, which meant that there weren’t many harsh shadows to deal with (though it also meant there wasn’t a lot of light).
Beautiful, Mike. You should photograph more flowers! I can’t believe you have only been doing this two years. Your photos are so good. 🙂