I had to have a memory also of the incredible flatness and vastness of the prairie. Of course, there was fairly much vegetation in the corner of it that we saw. And we truly only saw a corner! The prairie stretchess thousands of kilometres to the south, all the way to Texas if I’m not mistaken more or less without stop, through the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. In short, tornado alley. But it was a pretty corner we saw, with all the rapeseed fields.

In the English gardens of the conservatory in the Assiniboine Park.

Once I had tweaked the first picture, applying the same effect to other, similar pictures was easy (though not all turned out).

I posted a picture back in May called The Great Greening. This is another picture from the same series, but I’ve played quite a bit with the colours. I spent hours playing with black clipping, curves, exposure, temperature, split toning and vignettes, all the while checking with Jenna (does this look nice? I lose objectivity when I work for too long on my own pictures). Most of the effect was achieved by applying a yellow filter to the highlights and a blue filter to the shadows. Hope you like it.

…and I don’t know what they’re called. But they’re pretty.

Yes, here’s another post-rain flower, a peony. This one is especially pretty (IMHO).

• Nikon D70, Nikkor 50 mm lens, 1/1000 sec at f/1.8, ISO 200, skylight filter.

Hehe, I like taking pictures of flowers, and the rain and the flat, dull light make the colours come out much better. Wish I had an extension tube or a true macro lens so I could go closer. But there is still a lot of detail, especially since the picture is cropped.

• Nikon D70, Nikkor 50mm, 1/100th sec at f/7.1, ISO 640
• Had to crank up the ISO in order to get keep it steady at the desired depth of field.

Magnolias are gorgeous flowers. Many people have magnolia trees in their gardens. Here’s one of many, many pictures that I took with my 300mm.

More spring flowers, no bee on these ones.

It’s springtime in Canada, and the bees are out. Lots of pics to follow in the weeks to come, methinks. I like taking pictures of flowers.

• Nikon D70, Nikkor 18-70mm at 70mm, 1/1600 sec at f/4.5, ISO 200, Skylight filter
• 1/1600 really was a little optimistic, I brightened it a bit.