Hmmm ... that was a waste of time I thought, as I fogged over form my 3 hours of sleep. So I enacted plan B, which was no plan at all. What I should have done was raced over to try to catch the boats in mist at Dick Bell Park ... but I was too fogged to think of that ... so I opted to try the flowers in the sweet light of early morning. And man, is that light sweet ... wow.
I got there just as the sun had peaked the trees, so the Arboretum looked gorgeous. I got a few lovely shots with the Tamron 180. It framed a couple of trees near the river very nicely.
Actually, the first thing I shot was the moon from the parking lot. This one is amusing, although not really one of my better ones.
Back to the trees ... There is a lovely tree there that reminds one of those squat trees on the Serengeti ... and being backed by stacks of large trees in the distance adds a great background for this silhouette, although I processed it a little soft. That's a mtter of taste and I may go back and firm up the contrast a bit more.
I then popped the 2x teleconverter on and reframed ...
Still razor sharp ... love that lense. But I must say that the auto focus on Tamron lenses just plain sucks. Really fidgety without the teleconverter, utterly hopeless with it. Might one day switch to the Sigma 180 ... equally good and with one of them thar silent wave motors for auto focus. Not great, but streets ahead of the Tamron.
A tree closer to me offered a rather nice abstract of its branches. I have always liked these images ... some day I'll do a series ... they'd look great in a cheap motel :-)
Now, off to the flower beds across the road (Highway 16 \/ Prince of Wales.)
First thing I notice is that the Dahlias / Zinnias have been planted and are already flowering. The red one looks terrific so I take a shot at capturing it really close. With the Tamron and the Kenko, this is still on a tripod 3 feet away ...
And then there was this unbelievable pink thing, whose amazing art-like details were pulled out with the help of Topaz ... wow.
Several other colors all sharing the same beds ... this should be a great display through the rest of the summer. But right now, only some of the plants have blooms, and typically only one bloom per plant. Kind of like they just came from the store :-)
Ok, tired of those now. And off to see what else is around ... well, there are some spectacular Spider Flowers (Cleome) ... these babies are going to be stunning in August. At least 4 feet high and *huge* ... They are all over the gardens, so they are planning for a big show.
I popped over to the rose garden after that and one of the trellis's had a squirrel on it, enjoying a nut or something ...
They are soooo cute! But I hate them in my attic ... I gotta say. While I was in the rose garden I thought it appropriate to shoot at least one rose, which is all I ended up shooting.
On my way back to the newer flowers, I noticed how beautiful the sky was at that moment ... wispy clouds in front of the moon .. had to try to get that one. I'm very pleased with this result.
I then spotted a last stand of Foxglove ... and caught them with the sunrise coming up behind ... (taller trees so the gardens were still slightly protected.)
There will be a few more bells before it is all over ...
I think the following one is a Canna. But I cannot be sure. It's beautiful though ...
I then noticed, in the next bed, my absolute favorite daisy ... I shot these a few years ago with the Fuji F10 and absolutely loved those images. This is just as good and I plan to shoot these plants a lot in August. These are simply awesome at full bloom ...
On my way out ... I found the last few Peony plants with blooms. But none of the blooms were normal ... :-) ... all were mutants.
And, of course, the seed pods were massive ...
And that was it ... the Peonies are done, and the summer flowers are coming on very strong. In a few weeks, those beds will be packed with grown plants ... really looking forward to that.
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