The Quiet Picture

Random rants and occasional photographs

May 3

Abandoned garden

Category: daffodil, flower, scilla

On Tuesday I discovered some glory-of-the-snow flowers (Scilla forbesii) in Loos. The property where they grew looked empty, so I made some enquiries and found out that the owner lives in Stockholm and rarely visits. The owner’s father was the previous occupant and he was an avid gardener with carefully maintained flowerbeds and a variety of flowers. But that was 20 years ago and the garden is now growing wild, with butterbur spreading out of control, scattered daffodils, grape hyacinths, glory-of-the-snow and siberian squills, and wood anemone making headway among the rampant butterbur. What made all of this so special for me was that I had never even seen the glory-of-the-snow and grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) before. In fact, initially when I was looking at it, I thought that the grape hyacinth was a bud form of the glory-of-the-snow. The second look revealed my mistake…

So you can imagine I was having a great time photographing them all. I will be back, hopefully in the morning light on Saturday or Sunday. It will be too late for the scillas but the grape hyacints and daffodils have only started blooming.

Did I mention that this wild garden is situated next to the main thoroughfare in Loos? I seem to be doing a lot more public appearances now than I usually do in a year…

The glory-of-the-snow was photographed with the camera down in the grass, pointing slightly up to the flower. The angle finder is proving to be a real life-saver, it would be impossible to shoot from this angle without it. There was a lot of dry grass around and I thought I was avoiding it by using this upward angle, but nix - look at the OOF band in the background, I didn’t see it in DOF preview either. Does it spoil the image?

The daffodil is a new composition for me, getting really close with the 100mm lens and filling the frame with the yellow. The petals caught a little bit of the diffused sunlight and I’m quite happy with the result, actually. I can hardly wait for the summer!

1 Comment so far

  1. r.olsen May 4th, 2007 7:13 pm

    Congratulations! You did find some nice scillas and even more. To be honest, the OOF grass disturbs me a bit. The color shift from light brown to green is little too sudden, but the BG is quite creamy though. First one is good: Nice to see not only one but a couple of blossoms in one frame. The last one really rocks! I like the color and narrow DOF very much.

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