Category: Flower

Summer Garden delights

By cpadmin
  • Summer Garden delights
    Yellow brown Osteospermum
  • Summer Garden delights
    Eight of the eleven poppies in the noon day sun
Two of the eight images from our page showing images from Mike’s garden

Summer Garden delights shows two images of startling flowers captured in the garden today. The first image shows an an Osteospermum, possibly the Sunshine Beauty variety. This flower is also known as African daisy and I believe it originates from South Africa. I love the shades of the flower petals as they turn from white to yellow to brown in the summer sun

The second image shows eight of the eleven large red poppies in the back border. Three are yet to burst bud. The sun shines through the petals in this mid day capture. It gives the feel of having a light bulb behind them. These poppies have large bright red bowls formed by their flower petals and they have large black centres. A close up of these centres can appear as if they are large spiders!. The RHS website has more information on poppies.

It really is a joy to sit out in the garden in this lovely warm weather and see the summer garden delights. The Compass Photography website has a page of eight images of the startling flowers, all captured today. Follow the link

Summer will be here soon

By cpadmin

We all hope summer will be here soon and this wretched wind will blow away. The image below shows the field just over the road from Papermill Lock in between Danbury and Boreham in Essex. Papermill Lock is on the River Chelmer and it forms part of the Chelmer and Blackwater navigation. It connects Maldon and Chelmsford. Additionally, a great attraction here is the teashop, called Papermill Lock Tearooms. As well as that you can walk along the towpath and look at the boats, even feed the ducks and swans. Finally, of course you can sit and have tea and cake and watch the world go by.

Summer will be here soon
Buttercup field in full bloom

On the day of my visit the field opposite Papermill Lock was full of buttercups. The yellow dots of the flowers went as far as the eye could see. Tall rye grass is also poking up in the front of the image. The sky was blue, with hardly a cloud to be seen. Summer will be here soon and I am sure we will get days like this one from 2019. To reach the Lock you go from Danbury down the Ridge and North Hill. From Boreham you travel along Mowden Hall Lane and North Hill.

To view more images of Essex click on this link and see the Great Places to go in Essex

Arundel Castle’s tulips

By cpadmin

BBC Breakfast TV featured Arundel Castle’s tulips. Carol the BBC weather forecaster gave us a tour one morning and definitely showed the nation how nice it was. Last weekend we drove down there to look for ourselves. While some of the tulips had started to ‘go over’ and the daffodils were well past their best it was a truly magnificent display.

Arundel Castle's tulips
Pots and pots of brightly coloured blooms surround a gazebo

Pots and pots had been filled with bulbs in addition to those planted in the grass. One group of pots surrounded a tree that was just coming into leaf. Orange, different pinks and yellow tulips clustered around the otherwise uninteresting tree in a blaze of colour. Subsequently, we came across a gazebo around which were many more colourful pots.

By now Arundel Castle’s tulips will have ‘gone over’ however you can see more images of the time we spent there by using this link or visiting the website of Arundel Castle itself.

Arundel Castle’s website has the following text. “There are nearly 1,000 years of history at this great castle, situated in magnificent grounds overlooking the River Arun in West Sussex and built at the end of the 11th century by Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Arundel.

Bright colours at Hyde Hall

By cpadmin

On todays visit there were bright colours at Hyde Hall. I visited on a sunny morning in mid April 2021 and wandered around the grounds. I came away with 95 images. Of these I saved 34 and discarded the rest. This post has three of the images. Firstly, and without doubt my favourite image of the day is image of Bergenia Schneekoenigin. This lovely chain of small pink flowers goes up and down across the image. It was not until I subsequently looked over the images that I was aware of the chain effect!

  • April at RHS Hyde Hall
    Bergenia Schneekoenigin
  • April at RHS Hyde Hall
    Bergenia cordifolia Purpurea
  • April at RHS Hyde Hall
    A sprig of yellow Mahonia Aquifolium

The next image is a close up of the bright yellow Mahonia Aquifolium is next in the sequence. Bergenia cordifolia Purpurea has strong pink and purple flowers. I am sure it would stand out in the dark!

The Magnolias are out or alternatively coming out at this time of year. The pinky white raspberry ripple flowers are strongly in bud, whereas the white Magnolia cylindrica flowers are out. These last ones have undoubtedly suffered from the frost, as the brown petals show!

A new page on the website shows ten of the images I captured during this visit to Hyde Hall. Click here to go to that page

There are lots of bright colours at Hyde Hall. Its well worth a wander round. Check out their website

Bouquet of flowers

By cpadmin
Bouquet of flowers
Mothers day bouquet with purple background

This bouquet of flowers is the one that my children bought their mum for mothers day. I have set it down on the carpet and you may note that we have a black and white dog. The yellow gerbera especially set the display off and without a doubt when you put the display on the plum coloured carpet the yellow takes on a starring role. The white rose forms and off centre centre piece. The purple allium globemaster flowers complement the effect too. I have cut the image of this bouquet of flowers to a square format to enable the flowers to completely fill the picture.

This image certainly falls into the category of a lockdown image differing from two years ago. The I would have been have been buzzing around. I would not have and had or made the time to take this photograph!

The Compass Photography Website contains more images. Use the link to see them

Lens ball images in the garden

By cpadmin

Lens ball images in the garden. To me, sunflowers are an obvious target for the lens ball. The gallery below shows two images of sunflowers in the back garden. I found that I could capture the sunflower directly in the image as well as in the refraction. Trays and planters of petunias at the front of the house also made a target and one of them appears in the gallery below. To get the lens ball to the correct height I had to erect apparatus! This included the black and decker workmate, a plant pot and a towel. I also played with different focal lengths. All very worthwhile and enjoyable!

  • Small pastel colours
    Smaller lens ball image of pastel colours
  • Closer up sunflowers lensball
    Close up of sunflower through the lensball
  • Sunflowers through the lens ball
    Garden sunflowers through the lens ball
Lens ball images captured in the garden

The Compass Photography Website contains more lens ball images. Click here

Images through a Lens Ball

By cpadmin

On a visit to RHS Hyde Hall I captured some images through a lens ball. Simply put a lens ball is a crystal ball.  Refraction means that images shot through the lens appear upside down. Refraction occurs when light passes through an object of denser mass, such as water or in this case glass. The resulting image has two characteristics. Most of the image is the right way up. In contrast the element of the image within the lens ball is upside down.

The whole point of using a lens ball for me is that Photoshop allows you to isolate the circle of the lens ball within the image. You can then spin the image round so that both the main image and the contents of the lens ball are the “right” way round! You then see a microcosm of the image through the lens ball.

The images from Hyde Hall

  • lens ball photography
    Before. Looking over the lake at Hyde Hall (Before being spun round)
  • lens ball photography
    After. The same image “spun”
  • lens ball photography
    The upper pond at Hyde Hall

The first image shows the lake at Hyde Hall as the image came from the camera and the second image shows the refraction “spun” 180 degrees. The third image shows the upper pond at Hyde Hall

More lens ball images captured at Hyde Hall and on the River Crouch appear on our website https://www.compassphotography.co.uk/latest-images/

Alternative sunflowers

By cpadmin

Alternative sunflowers. 2020 has been a good year for sunflowers in my garden. Most of the ones I have grown have dwarf varieties, Little Leo and Teddy Bear. I could not get out to buy packets of tall sunflower seeds due to lockdown. Both varieties grow approximately three feet high. Little Leo is a classic sunflower with long yellow petals, just like the sun’s rays. Teddy bear has a pompom head. It works by starting the flowers as a fringe on the outside and working towards the centre to complete the pompom.

  • Alternative sunflowers
    A pompom sunflower “Teddy Bear”
  • Alternative sunflowers
    Sunflower pot through the lens ball

The weather also brought some great opportunities for photographing the sunflowers. one of my birthday presents was a lens ball. I decided to experiment with it and the sunflowers were the first subject. A lens ball is a glass sphere which can be used to capture images. The process of refraction turns the image upside down. You have to use software to correct that afterwards. Two images are attached. One showing the “Teddy bear” variety. The lens ball captures the second image. I hope you like the images of alternative sunflowers. This web page has more images of my sunflowers.

I do have some tall sunflowers, these are self-set ones!

Success in photography competitions

By cpadmin

Crantock Poppies

Sucess in photography competitions
National Trust Poppies at Crantock

We have had success in photography competitions with two images recently. The poppy field captured at Crantock near Newquay was one of the images that did well. We were there in June last year and the whole hillside was covered with poppies. Most were red, some were yellow. The National Trust field sloped down towards the sea and the hills on the other side of the valley. The sun was out that day and it was summer at its best. This image was entered in a competition called wildflower landscapes, it came 11th out of 1374 entries, in the top 1%! Use this link to visit the National Trust website for Crantock Beach

White Statue

success in photography competitions
Man escaping at Marks Hall

The second images is more of a strange one. It has had success in photography competitions entitled “strange but true”, “off the wall” and objects on grass. The image shows a sculpture at Marks Hall Gardens last autumn. The white sculpture shows the top half of man supposedly climbing out of something. His arms are levering himself up and he is concentrating on what he is doing. It makes quite an impression. This image came 9th out of 1004 in its best position. Use this link to visit the website of Marks Hall

To look at more of the images go to www.compassphotography.co.uk

Virtual exhibition continues

By cpadmin

The virtual exhibition continues at Rayleigh Windmill. Four more of Mike’s images have been posted on the Facebook page of the windmill. They are images that have been created during lockdown. The lockdown made me take more images in the garden, probably ones I would not have sought out if we had been free to roam Click on this link to see the images. Here is one of the images

All creatures macro and small
Unfurled tulip with added greenfly

Visit our website to see more images