How do you capture the beauty of a water lily? Claude Monet chose to paint massive canvases with wide expanses of ponds dotted with water lilies. My normal instinct is to focus on a single flower and to capture images like the first one below.
My photography mentor Cindy Dyer likes to challenge me to slow down and to look for interesting groupings of flowers. So I lingered longer at the water lilies and tried to compose images in different and more creative ways, resulting in the the second and third images below that contain more than just a single flower.
I took these photos last week during a trip with Cindy to Green Spring Gardens, a local county-run historical garden. In previous postings I have featured the pink water lilies and the lotuses at the small pond there. My goal today was to turn the spotlight on the more “traditional” white water lily.
If you click on these images to examine them more closely, you will see that I captured a number of “bonus bugs” on the leaves of the lily pads. “Bonus bugs” is a term that Cindy coined to refer to insects that show up when you are processing your photos that you never saw when you were taking them.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
😍 Beeeeautiful!
It freaks my photographer daughter out when she discovers the “bonus bugs” in her images, haha.
It is amazing how many things are in the frame that we don’t see when we are focusing on the main subject. Landscape photographers can be much more deliberate in carefully composing their images, but most of the time wildlife photographers don’t have that luxury.
We had the pleasure of being at the Monet lily ponds in France some time ago, and the ponds at the Biltmore Estate in Ashland, NC more recently. Always a good photo op, including “bonus bugs!” Nice images! M 🙂
Wow, that is amazing to have had the chance to see the Monet lily ponds. With the current situation, my chances of getting to Biltmore are much better than getting to France any time soon.
These are very pretty, Mike.
Thanks, Dan.
I often see water lilies in flower when I’m out in my canoe in the Minnesota summer, and I’m missing them. These are a wonderful reminder of those wonderful, more normal times.
The way things are looking now, the chances of a trip to Minnesota this summer seem slim. I’m glad I can help to bring back memories of past and hopefully future times there.
One, two, three! It is interesting to see the difference in composition with multiple lilies. And amazing what you capture, sometimes by chance with the camera as well as your main subject.
Thanks, Chris. I have a kind of default mode when it comes to taking photos that normally includes isolating a single subject, so I have to constantly remind myself to try to envision a scene in different ways. Sometimes switching lenses helps, though I am more likely to be changing angles of view and moving my body than changing lenses.
Absolutely beautiful, Mike! I frankly have always found it difficult to capture water lilies well, despite how marvelous they look right in front of me. You’ve done an amazing job of showing off their beauty, singly and in a group.
Thanks. Water lilies are still a challenge to me and I hope to have a few more chances with them this season.
These are really wonderful!
That’s a nice collection, Mike.
Thanks, Steve. Groups are so hard to photograph, but at least this group of lilies was more cooperative than the average group of humans or birds. 🙂
I’ll take water-lilies or any flower for that matter over the others. 🙂