Macro flower photographs

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C&C appreciated

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"Débourrage" of the vine is the opening of the tiny buds which will eventually become grapes. It usually happens in the second half of march in southern France.
Eos 40D, Sigma 105 macro, HDR through "Fusion 2.2.2", "The Gimp" for High Pass sharpening.

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Originally Posted by gpzt

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Lovely photos Guy, I love this cherry especially

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bluebell

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forsythia

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Originally Posted by Letrow

Lovely photos Guy, I love this cherry especially

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Thank you for your kind comment, Peter. I do appreciate because I particularly like you high quality
(numerous !) photos and consider your work as very professional.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7077/6...ac5e94e0_b.jpg lamium

and two unknown ones

a very small yellow flower http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7084/6...47597641_b.jpg

and the following in the dunes near Zandvoort http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5152/6...c126290f_b.jpg

Last prunus of the year I think. We had a spell of bad weather, wind and rain and all the blossoms were blown of the prunus tree.

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Ah well, next year hopefully we'll have it again. On to the other flowers!

Lamium purpureum, purple deadnettle. It's a very small flower, and I find it more beautiful when getting down to eye height with it.
The individual flowers are the size of a match head, and it rises about two inches from the ground. Some more detail may be seen by opening it in its own window or tab; it's posted in about 2 megapixel size. (The image was taken with a Rodenstock Trinar 50 mm enlarging lens.)
http://uploads.ifokus.se/uploads/c2c...lister-008.jpg

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Originally Posted by Inkanyezi

Lamium purpureum, purple deadnettle. It's a very small flower, and I find it more beautiful when getting down to eye height with it.
The individual flowers are the size of a match head, and it rises about two inches from the ground. Some more detail may be seen by opening it in its own window or tab; it's posted in about 2 megapixel size. (The image was taken with a Rodenstock Trinar 50 mm enlarging lens.)
http://uploads.ifokus.se/uploads/c2c...lister-008.jpg

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I always love the hairs on this flower, great shot from low on the ground.

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Nice shots Guy. The butterfly is beautiful with a nice contrast between sharp and bokeh. I like the purple flowers photo as well. Have you done anything to the colours in that one? The green looks a bit more subdued than the colours of the flowers, which works.

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Originally Posted by Letrow

Nice shots Guy. The butterfly is beautiful with a nice contrast between sharp and bokeh. I like the purple flowers photo as well. Have you done anything to the colours in that one? The green looks a bit more subdued than the colours of the flowers, which works.

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Thank you for your appreciation, Peter. As far as I can remember, the light was very soft on that day: the pic was taken in my daughter's garden in the Ardennes (Belgium) and I didn't change anything, except increasing( slightly) sharpness.
Best regards, Guy.
PS: your comments do encourage me and I think I'm going to use my macro more often in the coming months...
Question: do you use a tripod? Always, often, seldom or never ?

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Originally Posted by gpzt

Question: do you use a tripod? Always, often, seldom or never ?

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Never Guy. But it might have to do with the combination of camera and lens. The lens is the 105mm VR and although VR is supposed not to do much at very close distances it still seems to help me. The camera has an automatic ISO, which enables me to manually set aperture and shutterspeed and then depending on the available light, ISO will move automatically up or down.
I like to walk around, looking for interesting flowers and insects, so that is why I don't really have time to set up a tripod.

Sunny days work best for me, because of the light.

Common chickweed is an early flower in the spring. This sample has only one stamen, I don't have any idea why. The flower is about 2 mm wide.

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At dusk, the flowers close themselves, and the stamens are pressed closer to the stigma, thus I suppose this flower pollinates itself. Early in the spring I haven't seen any insects around, but nevertheless, these flowers pollinate and bear seeds.

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A distinctive feature of the chickweed, that separates it from other similar species, is a string of hairs at one side of the stem.

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Here's a pennywort, Anemone Hepatica. The image shows the splendid colour separation of the cheap three element enlarging lens that has become my favourite for flower shots, Rodenstock Trinar. I got it for a song, or rather 50 SEK (somewhat more than £3), and I think it's worth every penny of it.

http://uploads.ifokus.se/uploads/77a...patica-010.jpg

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Originally Posted by Inkanyezi

Here's a pennywort, Anemone Hepatica. The image shows the splendid colour separation of the cheap three element enlarging lens that has become my favourite for flower shots, Rodenstock Trinar. I got it for a song, or rather 50 SEK (somewhat more than £3), and I think it's worth every penny of it.

http://uploads.ifokus.se/uploads/77a...patica-010.jpg

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I think the lens performs great. The detail on the leaves looks very sharp and so do the stamens. I really like the colours in this photo.
What is your first name by the way?

Many varieties of Scilla also are rather small.

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