softly, in the garden

There is a segment of the photographic world that is focusing, or rather not focusing, on flowers. The result is a dreamy, slightly blurred take on one of the world's favorite subjects to take pictures of. In an attempt to capture this type of image, I spent some time in the garden yesterday. The weather was overcast and raining off and on, with a slight breeze. Perfect filtered light, saturated color and slight, misty blur.

I am not surprised that it was difficult to do what I was trying to do. I usually spend my time, when working with flowers, wishing the wind would stop blowing and I think I spent just as much time on this occasion wishing the breeze would start. Plus, it's much harder to take a slightly sharp picture of a flower and still incorporate movement without it looking like just a bad picture.

I think I got some cool results. Some of the ones here are your more traditional stopped action, shallow depth of field. But others have this romantic, lit from within soft focus effect that brings to mind Monet's gardens and soft summer days.

And, again to parody life, some things just don't come clearly into focus right away. And the result can be either frustrating or inspirational, depending on whether it's the journey or the destination that's important to you.