I love blooming meadows in this season especially those of Alpine type glowing with yellows, pinks, violets, reds and whites. Our meadows were once fields for growing crops or pastures for cattle. Almost noone is growing own crop or breeding own cattle nowadays. It’s not economically efficient. So the past fields and pastures turned into meadows in past 20 years. Unfortunatelly such a meadows are not home for wide variety of meadow flowers. The most common ones are dandelions and common daisies (Bellis Perennis) which are simply everywehere. Less spread are oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum Vulgare), blue and white campanulas, poppies and cornflowers.
Common daisies, in our country called sevenbeauties, are very often photographed and I wanted to try it this year also. It’s beautiful how they turn their heads towards the sun as sunflowers and how their petals are bright white the first day of bloom and turning to pink at tips every other day.
~ Sevenbeauty ~
1/1600 sec. @ 100 mm, f/2.8, ISO 100
This photo is also first in my new series called simply “From meadows and fields” in which I would like to present various flowers blooming in our country on meadows and fields.
I see much more oxeye daisies everywhere this year comparing it to previous years and that’s good because they are beautiful flowers keeping their heads high in tall meadow grass. With not lawned meadows it’s quite tough to find pleasing composition with them though as they are often hidden deeply in grass so if you want to take photos of them you need to garden some unwanted stalls almost always. I really like oxeye daises and thus I had to photograph them this year also.
~ Daisy trio ~
1/1600 sec. @ 100 mm, f/2.8, ISO 100
I wanted more blossoms in frame and I was happy to separate these three. The colour version isn’t much pleasing though so I used a toning which results in much more pleasing image. Hope you like it.
This is all for today. One of next posts will be about poppies.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Technical information: all photographs in this post were taken with Canon EOS 450D camera and Canon EF 100mm USM macro lens, in natural conditions.
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It is fun to photograph meadow flowers. The top image works nicely with the position of the flower and limited dof. There are a couple of stems or grasses that might be blended into the bg a bit better. The bottom image doesn’t work very well for me. It seems rather flat, and the bg too busy. I’m surprised as I usually love your flower photos!
Thanks for constructive critique, Anita. I see the grass stems next to the tallest daisy as a little bit distracting but I decided to keep them there. Also the toning is a bit unusual for me because it goes to blue tones which may make the image a bit cooler than the common sepis tones. Maybe this also makes you dislike the image. Actually both photos are little bit different than what I normally present and probably I need to learn to see things in this new magnification ratio. I have some other photos which are of this type (poppies in field) so I wonder what you will say on those. It’s not given that you must love all my photos, right? 🙂
Well, I think both are relaly lovely images, Tomas. You can tell they are so well thought out – from composition to finishing. You seem to know exactly the mood and sense you want each image to portray.
Do you ever name your images? I think when a photographer names their images (and names them well 🙂 ), the viewer gains great insight as to what the photographer was thinking or what they feel the image portrays. I like knowing that. Others may not. But I do. 🙂
Thank you, Tracy. You say that “I can tell they [my photos] are so well thought out – from composition to finishing”. Are they? Really? 🙂 I’ve ben thinking about it whole day and I think that I’ll make another post about it so I’ll be secretive now 😉
Regarding naming images – yes, sure I do give them names and given names depend at least on my current mood and on the photo itself. I prefer if the image evokes something in my head – some relation, memory, moment, feeling – and then I usually come with a name which does not have direct relation to the subject on the photo. If it does not evoke anything then I just use the subject name such as Dandelion or Freesia from later posts. If you dig deeper in my posts you will find titles under photos, nowadays I don’t give them always here. As you write that you like to know them though I will start providing them. If not for everyone then at least for you 😉 In this post the first photo is titled “Sevenbeauty” (name explained in post above) and the second one has simple name “Daisy trio”.
So, they’re not?? Guess I will have to wait until the secret is revealed! 🙂
Now I would name the first image ‘Kissed’ because the tips look like they’ve been lightly kissed with pink.
For the second…since the third daisy isn’t all that apparant (just looks liek a smear in the background), I’d go with something like “Mother and Child”. That is simply the first thing I thought of when I saw it. The larger flower being the Mother, watching over the smaller flower, the Child.
I like your title for the first photo. Apparantly you’re better in creative naming than me 🙂
Hi,
The Daisy is such a beautiful flower in it’s simplicity. I very much like the top one!
Ingrid
Thanks Ingrid for stopping by.
I love the daisies you have here. We see them as wild flowers rarely anymore, but there is a cultivated variety, and I planted some last year in our garden. They haven’t bloomed yet, but your photos have provided me with the inspiration to photograph them when they return.
Thanks Ken, it’s wondereful to hear that my photos inspires you. This is what I really like on photography and blogging. We have the cultivated daisies (both common ones and oxeye) but fortunatelly we see enough of their natural varieties on gardens and meadows to not need plant them, yet.
[…] a response to my previous post my fellow photographer Tracy Milkay (her great photo blog here) wrote “You can tell they […]
I love the comp on the bottom/sepia one. I’m not a fan of ‘black holes.’ One remedy would be to do a vertical blur on the bg – just a slight one- then blend back with original and paint the flowers back in. Hard to figure the best dof! Barbara K
Thanks for the tip, Barbara. I’ll try it. Have a nice weekend.