Back to our usual route

Back to lotus, waterlilies and a crysanthemum ^_^

The weather has been really unpredictable lately, I kept needing to change the settings on my camera as I walk around the garden. I guess it is all part of practice though

We found a blooming lotus in the waterlily pond. It's great that for the first time ever we were able to get up close to the lotus and capture the texture of its petals...the only imperfection is that it's in such a small pond, it is impossible to blur out the background (a building wall) during composition...

Hope to capture something exotic next week~

New flowers for the new year

We had a rainy Monday last week and as a result we were able to capture waterlilies and lotus leaves covered by raindrops, I am always amazed at the perfection of these sparkling creations.

Thanks to the extremely hot weather on Friday, we persuaded ourselves to visit the Tropical Gardens within the Royal Botanic Garden. There is a $5.50 pp fee but by the time we walked out, we both felt the gardens were definitely worth the cost.

The abundance of flora within the tropical gardens took us by surprise. We both agreed we should go there again to do a proper session...

All about Echo

Echo is quite the little lady. She now has a preferred spot on the scratching post, her favourite snack (cat grass) is always readily available...and now she has developed a new way to drink water~ I was able to capture this little sequence of movements tonight just before my camera's battery died :P

Dragonfly with a difference :)

We found a dragonfly during our last session and it's completely yellow from head to tail! Unlike the red dragonflies we captured earlier, these yellow ones prefer dry land and don't actually dwell near ponds and lakes. I also saw a larger dragonfly which was black with yellow or white markings, but it flew away while I was chasing the yellow one...o well, perhaps we'll get lucky on our next visit~

The chrysanthemums are starting to bloom, I love how the petals look glazed at the centre and almost see through - looks quite delicious actually :)

A trip to the gardens with my new lens

Yep, I went to the garden again on Saturday.

I can hardly contain myself since I got my new "Weapon of Choice" on Friday and wanted to photograph all the things I missed with my 18-200mm lens. The 18-200mm lens doesn't allow me to get very close to my subject, so I had to give up shots in the past of smaller flowers and insects but not anymore! :D

The blurring of the background in this lens is very nice and I love how the photo "liquifies" from sharpness to blurriness at various distances.

Unfortunately the dragonfly that was cooperating with me on Friday refused to the same yesterday :( I tried to persuade it several times and lingered around the lily pond for hours but it just wouldn't sit still...in the end I only got a partial of the eyes - magnification of the lens allowed the structure of the eyes to appear were very clear but if only the direction was better I would be happier...oh well...perfection is hard to achieve, good thing I've got plenty of time to practice :)

A new lens!

Today is a very exciting day for me. I bought my first Macro Lens (Canon 60mm EF-S f/2.8 USM Macro)!!

I've been looking into this lens for the last 2 weeks, thinking about the day that I may get it (it costs $800 rrp here and even at sale price it's usually around $700 - which was quite a lot to spend for me)...I reluctantly tried the 2nd hand online site gumtree.com.au and found that someone was selling this lens for $400 inc. a 1.5x magnification filter! I was so excited and yet skeptical, would this lens be damaged in anyway to warrant such a price drop? After trying the lens out for 15minutes however I'm convinced that this was the lens for me.

Somehow the way the pictures loaded on blogger are always not in the order of how I loaded them - the first and forth photos were taken using the macro lens while the others were taken using my usual 18-200mm lens.

I can't believe that the fly in the first photo was as big as an ant! The size it turned up on the screen was very impressive (and that's without the magnification filter)!

I am very very pleased (and slightly guilty for spending money) with myself for getting this new lens as I am sure it will be used a lot more than my 18-200mm (gosh I'll need a new bag to keep them both!)

The only thing this lens lacks is the image stabliser that I've come to rely on for some photos as my hands are not sturdy (especially if I'm in a strange posture as I often find myself), but given that this is a much lighter lens, I am sure that the problem will not be too difficult to overcome (practice practice :)).

And the shot I've been wanting to get - a frontal view of the dragonfly. It's turned out very clear, but now that I have a new lens, I have higher aspirations...hrmm perhaps another photo trip tomorrow if it doesn't rain.... :P

Back into photos!

Gosh it feels so great taking photos every week! Even with the sun and heat of summer as my enermies, the photo sessions still fill me with a great sense of satisfaction and joy - somehow the heat and sun aren't as bad as they seem during my photo sessions even though we usually go out during the middle of the day.

I haven't had much quality sleeps over the last few days (or the entire week for that matter), the heat was so unbearable that I had 2 almost sleepless nights - followed by sleeping from the moment I get home the day after due to exhaustion...

Yesterday was a day like that. I slept for max. of 2 hours the night before as I tossed and turned in my bed trying to find a cooler spot, so the moment I got home around 6pm I went straight to bed and fell asleep. A phone call woke me at 11pm, it was my dad on the other line, his news brings my sleepy mind straight back to full alert: his friend's Queen of the Night flower is blooming!

Queen of the Night (Epiphyllum), is a flower with many names. It is known officially as Tan Hua in Chinese, but also known as Yue Xia Mei Ren (Lady Beneath the Moon) or Wang Qing (Lost Emotions - it is said that the flower possesses such beauty that one cannot help but forgetting everything to admire the flower. Another story is that if one wishes to forget a painful memory, you can achieve this by eating the flower of this plant). In China, the blooming of the Queen of the Night is seen as both a rare and short lived occasion. The flower opens only at night and for a short period of 2-3 hours before it wilts away. The flowering process is easily missed if the plant isn't monitored every day during the budding period.

I found out that the Queen of the Night is of the cacti family, that's why its flowers are very similar to the torch cactus I photographed late last year.

The first photo is shot with my Canon IXUS 70 compact camera, depth of field is quite amazing for a compact camera.

I'm not sure why but the depth of field from my Canon 500D with the 18-200mm lens (photos below) does not achieve great depth of field, only one small part of the shot can be focused.

Finally, the shot I have been trying to achieve: a dragonfly headshot from the front. This is only a first go so the shot is still not perfect...I hope dragonflies continue to roam the garden so I can continue to improve on these shots.