Spring Is Here

After several days in a row with temperatures way above normal, Mother Nature got a huge push to get plants going. It seemed like the daffodils came up in just a few days, everything greened up, and the flowering trees came into bloom. It's a beautiful time of year when the Winter greys disappear.

I made a trip over to Michele's garden -- my first visit in the Spring. It was a beautiful, sunny day. There were several types of daffodils in bloom. One is shown at right -- taking using a fill flash to get some light into the center of the flower. A fill flash also creates some shadows that give a bit of depth to the straight on view.

There were lots of flowering trees to look at too. The photo below shows a close-up of one of the blossoms.



This is one of my favorite photos of tree blossoms.


The subjects I found most interesting were the fiddlehead ferns that were just starting to emerge from the ground. Michele pointed them out -- otherwise I would have missed them. The photo at right shows them just as they stalks start to come out. When they get up a few inches, you can see a well developed structure even though they are only about the size of a $0.25 piece. The first photo below shows a macro view at an early stage. As they get a bit higher, a kind of red fuzz appears on the stalks and the head. The second photo below shows the fuzzy texture. In both cases I used a fill flash on the side away from the direct sun to get rid of the dark shadow.





You can see all the photos from my visit in a Flickr set here.