Tulips to the Power of 10 ~ Floral Friday!

"Tulip Celebration"

(1/30 sec.@ F/11, 200mm fl, ISO 200, tripod, shade, 55-200mm tele zoom)

Tulips. Today's image is from my visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens for the annual Tulip Festival. And boy, the colors are fantastic. This week coming will be the week to visit, as they're just starting to open now. In fact, this past week, many of the shade varieties weren't even ready to pop. So this next week will be ideal.

The colors. Ever just take a photo because the scene seems to drip with color, and therefore almost becomes it's own subject. I spotted these variegated tulips across a small pond under the shade of a large pine tree. The bright sun was making it difficult to get many of the patches of flowers that weren't tucked away in some shade, so when I spotted these I pounced. And their sunny color really is the subject of this shot, along with the repetitive shapes, and contrasting reds and greens throughout.

Kept my telephoto on so as to get in tight and eliminate the surrounding trees on either side, and to compress the distance giving the effect of a sea of tulips. Filled the frame almost completely for impact. In fact the first few shots I took of these were taken vertically... then I realized they also worked on a horizontal crop. It has less space, filling more of the image. I could have cropped or composed so that I excluded the entire top of green in the background... but I liked how it echoes the greens in the immediate foreground so I left it.

With tulips, color is key. Hope you're out there injecting some bold color into your images once in a while. Something that makes you say "wow!"

In the meantime, thanks for the ramble, and for waiting for Blogger to come back online. Have a great weekend folks! Cheers!