Oriental fireworks

one of my favourite images.. not the sharpest or best focussed but the lighting and composition works for me.

Rabbit run

Just a hundred yards from the house there is a field home to rabbits and foxes.

Fallen

passionflowers have never quite seemed real to me.. they are too structural and needlessly flamboyant.. this one had fell to the ground and I like the tension of this atop the bed of dead wood and twigs, ants and bugs starting to take it back into the earth from where it came.

Blanket of Chillies

I'm not normally one for bright colors in images.. but there is something so incredibly fresh and appealing about these chillies

hanging on

just a day walking in the woods

a spring field

so this scene originally caught my attention as there were two deer in it.. i took a few shots of them but realised that I preferred the image with just the field and the gorgeous soft light across the poppies.

late maple

a day out at westonbirt arboretum. all too easy to get distracted by the mass of colours and spectacular trees, but sometimes simple is best.

lavendula

a day out to explore the gardens of the cotswolds. Hidcote gardens gave its name to this particular lavender,

river grass

one of those rainy sunny days, out with a new lens sony 85mm 1.4. a phenomenal lens with almost perfect circular bokeh balls.

star of India

I do love clematis, far more than a rose but perhaps not quite as much as a summer jasmine.

I also seem to have better success growing clematis than either of the others.

by any other name

a handy spray bottle of water and glycerin to join me at some country gardens. allows nice beading of the water droplets and I'm sure the bees and flowers don't mind too much :)

one in a million

I think this shot was taken in Regents Park London., just a bed of roses as far as you can see.

a little spice

most years my parents grow a few chilli plants from seed and this is one that made it's way happily to my kitchen windowsill.

love a bit of chilli in Italian, Mexican or Thai food.

elm avenue

another day at Westonbirt, it's only 30 mins up the road and regardless of the weather and season there is always something that can be photographed.

a florists day

helping a friend out with photos for her floristry business, took loads of images, but this was perhaps my favourite of them.. even though the bouquet itself wouldn't be my choice (prefer the whites and greens tbh).

beneath the trees

a day with the parents in the lake district.. trying to talk my parents through seeing photos and framing them and this was the chosen image.

taken as a tilt shift to allow the focus to be located on the diagonal as I wanted.

a new romance

I shouldn't like this image, its a rose in my least favourite colour of peachy salmon blurgh,

but I do like the way the focus falls away.

Hollyhocks

I rather like these, perhaps a bit cottagy for me, but also quite structural with their towering spires.

Clean

one of my favourite images. as simple as simple can be.. but actually took quite a bit of set up and layered lighting to get this to turn out the way I wanted.

a splash of color

nope this isn't an english garden... actually taken in Detroit botanical gardens.

but a lovely shot i think, just makes you smile

intensity from a daisy

I do like daisy's... basically I like flowers that are simple like a child might draw with open petals.

emerging from the shadows

definitely my type of photo, lots of darks and just a little sprinkling of detail..

pale love

given I don't really like roses I have taken a fair few images of them.. I like this image though, just the right sharpness and fall off to feel gentle and timeless.

man flowers

yep these are definitely more my kind of flower... architectural and dramatic. when I plant out my garden it will certainly have some eryngiums included in the scheme.

amongst the barley

I don't recall where this one was taken.. but I remember the lighting was ideal and super soft in the late afternoon.

the simplest shot, but one that works I think.

beauty and the beast

I've never really been that into macro photography. but just occasionally its fun to peer into the world and appreciate the craziness of nature.

color in monotone

This image had such strong composition and defined shadows that the intense orange colouring really wasn't adding anything. a monochrome conversion worked well.

I actually always shoot raw, but with a monochrome viewfinder and review screen so this is how I saw it as it was taken.

a break from the city

Regents Park really is a lovely park in the centre of london. Whilst this might not suggest it it's a popular spot for lunchbreaks in the middle of the summer days.

Perfection

one of my favourite shots.. i don't recall the lens I think perhaps the 180 canon macro. the lack of focus stacking and sharpness front to back is of benefit to the image in this instance I think.

drinking the rain

taken in Sarasota Florida this was a shot mainly for the background.. an interesting plant and loads around that area.

astrantia in focus

a bit of focus stacking.. this was an exercise in lighting and focus stacking rather than a particularly interesting composition.

summer through the leaves

after a summer motorbike ride I found myself lazing in a park soaking up the summer sun. whilst I wasn't admiring the pretty girls walking by I was laid back and this is what I saw.

mmm..

a clematis in my parents garden, they are both keen gardeners and the plants are always in amazing condition.

bringing the nourishment

a very simple composition. where I stopped for a breakfast on my walk back from a night camping out on the hills.
there was a frog hopping around quite happily in the stream keeping me company.

not ready yet

Apples ripening on my Bramley apple tree at the house. each year I get hundreds of amazing apples off this well established tree.

Despite being cooking apples they are good enough to eat fresh if you have a strong stomach!

early fall

a walk through Vermont with my parents. walking up to a mountain top lake where we found a fisherman floating around in his inflatable ring.

flowers in focus

another experiment with focus stacking.. just incredible detail that can be achieved when you layer the focus across multiple frames.

seed heads

I enjoy the tones of these seed heads. really simple but quite a challenge to light so the background also comes through and complements the subjects.

under the banyan tree

another shot from Florida visiting my friend Nicole. she took me out exploring and came across this stunning Banyan tree.. lighting was a bit of a challenge with the floridian sun but a few images bracketed gave enough of a capture to work with.

Thistle make a man of yer

I love thistles and this one was just in the field next to my house.. a full power strobe to knock the background into blackness and quite a drastic framing I think.

purity

if I were to choose flowers for the house it would be whites and greens..

this took some setup to get the pure down shot and clear background.. actually involved my hanging out of an upstairs windows and holding a plank which taking shots straight down the ground below.. Meryem sat on my feet to stop me falling out the window :)

Stargazing

my first ever time using a flash unit. my parents had a vase of these huge stargazer lilies on their fireplace, but the dark slate fireplace and the powdery stamens bring some drama to the simple scene.

atop my hill

I love lone trees.. and when they are atop an isolated mound i cannot resist.

bit of a messy background but with the low clouds on one of the days it made a workable image.

planes of versailles

just around the corner from our usual hotel there is an avenue of plane trees accentuated by these stylish lamps.. there's a window of only a few minutes when you get the morning sunlight and the lamps are still aglow, but its worth trying for!