Droplets
I went to Unbelievable Acres yesterday morning with the PBC Photo Walkers (West Palm Beach). I took this photo of a Bird of Paradise leaf with one large and one small water droplet hanging conveniently from the edge. Taken with the Canon 100 f2.8 macro. If you click on the photo to get a larger version you can see the reflection of the surrounding foliage in the larger water droplet. Outstanding!
Unbelievable Acres is a private, nonprofit botanical garden located in West Palm Beach, Florida. The garden was established in 1970 by Gene Joyner, who has developed and maintained it since. It is now one of Florida’s largest private collections of tropical fruit trees, with a 30 m (100 ft) high tree canopy. Gene gave us a tour through the gardens.
Palm Tree
The garden contains some 2000 varieties of plants, including more than 170 varieties of fruit trees, with 92 types of citrus, and 35 types of banana and plantain trees. It also includes orchids, bromeliads, palms, and ferns, as well as less well-known plants such as jaboticaba trees.
This image of a palm tree was a complete and happy accident. The tree was under exposed and the sky blown out. I used that to my advantage having enough detail in the tree to extract a good image . Post-processed in Lightroom 3 for exposure and in Photoshop CS5 to remove some dead leaves using the fantastic context-aware fill feature.
About 25 members of the PBC Photo Walkers Meetup group participated and it was a very nice event. I had been there last year as a photo assistant to Vincent Versace and Steven Ames – a nude photo shoot (the models not the photographers). I did not have a chance to walk the trails then (too busy holding reflectors on the models).
Drama Flower
This last image was made of a flower with some dramatic lighting again using the Canon macro lens. Notice the delicate texture in the petals by clicking on the photo to see a larger version of the image.
All photos from the trip can be seen under Flowers in the Photo Gallery or go directly to: http://bit.ly/coXwUF