Category: Flower

Sunny day before storm Ciara

By cpadmin

Sunny day before storm Ciara

Today was a sunny day before storm Ciara arrives tomorrow. I was able to capture images at Hanningfield Reservoir and Compass Gardens in South Woodham Ferrers. The reservoir at Hanningfield held more water than I have seen it is for a long time. The sun and the clear sky allowed me to create marvellous images of the large expanse of water. Use this link to take a look at Hanningfield’s website

Sunny day before storm Ciara
Glorious views at Hanningfield reservoir

In Compass Gardens the crocuses and catkins were out. I played with a few images of the crocuses and in the end got down to ground level. Literally the camera on the grass and my mobile phone employed to keep the camera level. It’s a great result. It shows the grass being taller than the crocus. The trees look massive in the background. The storm is coming tomorrow and I suppose it will not be possible to get such nice photographs.

Sunny day before storm Ciara
Yellow crocuses from ground level

See more of our images at WWW.Compassphotography.co.uk

Won prizes with these images

By cpadmin

Won prizes with these images. The Schoolroom at the chapel in Woodham Ferrers ran a Michaelmas Photography competition. The competition attracted over 100 entries. In addition it should be noted that it raised money for Mission Romania. Firstly, Mission Romania is a Salvation Army charity which delivers shoeboxes direct to children in Romania and Moldova. As well as providing shoeboxes, the charity is active in providing other support to these communities. So its worth supporting. Search for Mission Romania on Facebook and look at the great work that they do. Click this link

Five of my images won prizes and they are appended to the text here. Three images were in the “Best of Essex” category, whereas one was in “Flowers”, while the final one was in the “Sunrise/sunset” category. When entering images for a competition, you never know which ones the judges will select for prizes. Following previous times when I have agonised over the images I did a quick pick this time just before the entries closed. It seems to have worked!

  • won prizes with these images
    Tucepi sunset
  • Best of Essex - Hyde Hall
    The main house
  • Allium at Hyde Hall
    Flowers – Purple Allium
  • won prizes with these images
    Steam roundabout at Barleylands
  • Best of Essex - Mersea
    Calm waters of the Mersea

There are lots more images on the Compass Photography Website. Click here

Passion flower, sunflower and a birds nest

By cpadmin

It was delightful to see the sunflower, passion flower and spot the birds nest hidden in the undergrowth.

Sunflower
Sunflower with a bee

Out in the garden on a sunny Sunday afternoon the sunflower and the passionfruit flower attracted me. The sunflower is about four feet tall, it should have been higher, but I didn’t encourage it to grow enough. Still, it is a lovely gold colour in the teatime sun.

Passion flower and a birds nest
Passion flower, passion fruit and a birds nest

Over by the fence the passion flowers are still growing and opening up. Behind them is the orange fruit of the plant and just visible is a birds nest too.

Look at more of the garden images in our garden galleries

Golden sunflowers

By cpadmin

Golden sunflowers, purple petunias and flaming red impatiens. Delightful summer gardens. “Little Dorrit” is the variety of the dwarf sunflowers, grown from seed and placed in pots. What is unique with one of the sunflowers is the additional flowers growing through the centre of the head!

Both the petunias and impatiens (busy lizzies) were bought as tiny “plug” plants from a local nursery and grown on in flower pouches. The impatiens have done better than the petunias this year.

See more of our images at www.compassphotography.co.uk

  • Purple petunias
    Flower pouches with impatiens and petunias
  • Golden Dunflowers
    Variety Little Dorrit
  • Golden sunflowers
    Little Dorrit

Smallest of dwarf sunflowers

By cpadmin

Smallest of dwarf sunflowers

This is the smallest of dwarf sunflowers. This variety of sunflower should grow to three feet high. All of the others from the packet are now that high. The bright yellow flowers are coming out in the garden making a nice show

Smallest of dwarf sunflowers

Accidental small dwarf sunflower

By Accident

I didn’t notice this one when I was potting the rest of them on. So it stayed in the greenhouse in its small pot and has grown even up even smaller. As the flower bloomed I brought it inside and it is sitting happily making a nice contrast with the plum coloured carpet. Next year I think that I will do this again with three or four dwarf sunflowers to have some spectacular colour inside our house! I will try and organise a better pot though!

Have a look at more of our sunflower images from previous years in our garden galleries by using this link.

Our website has many other great images. Go to www.compassphotography.co.uk

Equipment: Sony SLT-A65, Tamron 16-300 lens, f6.3 1/125 ISO 100

Cornucopia of colour

By cpadmin
  • Cornucopia of colour
    Purple alliums in front of daisies
  • Cornucopia of colour
    Aster alpinus goliath in the dry garden

There is a cornucopia of colour in a new collection of images captured at Hyde Hall in late May 2019. It was a slightly breezy sunny afternoon. I walked round the garden in a different sequence.

Normally, I arrive at the garden when it opens in the morning to capture images without other folk in the way. This visit was in the afternoon. As a result, it meant that the sun had moved round to a different angle and gave different opportunities.

Two images from the new gallery are shown above. One of the images shows Purple alliums set in front of a pastiche of out of focus bank of daisies. The second image show the compact purple and yellow aster on a bed of pebbles.

 Click on this link to see the whole cornucopia of colour gallery.

The whole  slide show includes more purple alliums, yellow roses in the rose garden, Californian poppies, a white Iris shaped like a polo mint and two restful images captured from a bench below the small pond.

This link will take you to our other Hyde Hall galleries

Equipment: Sony SLT-A65V, Tamron 16-300mm

Settings for alliums: F6.3 1/640 ISO 100

Settings for aster: F5.6 1/1000 ISO 100

Visit our website www.compassphotography.co.uk

 

 

Buttercup field in full bloom

By cpadmin

Buttercup field in full bloom
Buttercup field in full bloom

Buttercup field in full bloom

One of the best things about summer is a field of buttercups gently swaying in the wind. Our image of the week this week shows a field in Little Baddow, near Chelmsford in Essex. The field with this view is across the road from the car park at Papermill Lock. One of the houses at the Lock is seen on the left of the image. You can tell its still May because not all of the trees have greened up.

This image of the buttercup field is my favourite from the series. A curved sweep of yellow buttercups start in the centre right of the image. It makes its way out to the hedge row on the left and then across back to the right hand side.

The second image is show from the height of the actual buttercups and is a veritable sea of yellow. Dropping down to this height did mean that the movement of the nearest buttercup is a blur though.

Have a look at more of our images on www.compassphotography.co.uk

Equipment: Sony SLT-A65V, Tamron 16-300mm

 Image settings f3.5 1/2000 ISO 100

Buttercup field in full bloom
Buttercup field captured from buttercup height

A carpet of colour

By cpadmin

A carpet of colour
Close up of pink geranium/pelargonium

A carpet of colour
A carpet of colour

A carpet of colour was on view at our local garden centre last Wednesday morning.

Rows of freshly potted baskets hang from the ceiling above benches of small pots of flowers. Sometimes the colours are in rows or blocks and other times they are random. We can see geraniums, though actually they are pelargoniums. It worth going round to see all the plants and pick some nice ones, however, not only does the carpet of colour look nice, the plants smell wonderful. The people who work at the garden centre tell me that they can’t smell the plants. I think that’s because they are there all the time!

It will be time to start to make our own hanging baskets, just another week now. There is also a close up of a pink geranium/pelargonium. It’s in one of the hanging baskets and you can see the tiny hairs on the stem and well as the pastel shades of other flowers in the background. If you are wondering where the image was captured click on this link here

To see more of our images visit our website www.compassphotography.co.uk

Equipment: Sony SLT-A65V Tamron 16-300 lens

Settings f4.5, 1/250, ISO 100

Hyde Hall on Easter Sunday

By cpadmin

Hyde Hall on Easter Sunday

Hyde Hall on Easter Sunday
Distance shot of Woodham Ferrers

Hyde Hall on Easter Sunday
Rododendron saint tudy

Hyde Hall on Easter Sunday
Magnolia judy

Hyde Hall on Easter Sunday
purple Bergenia

Hyde Hall on Easter Sunday
Blossom on a Malus

An early visit to Hyde Hall on Easter Sunday enabled me to capture some super images in the sunshine. Hyde Hall is an RHS Garden in Essex, UK

The attractions included red and white blossom on the Malus trees, this one had no label! The purple Bergenia stood out against the white pebbles in the dry garden at the top of the hill. Magnolia judy is a delicate pink lurking around the far side of the lake overlapping the footpath. The strangely named Rododendron saint tudy (yes “tudy”) has lovely deep purple flowers and is found in a shady path to the right of the house.

The 150-600 lens enable me to frame a long distance image of houses along the B1418 in Woodham Ferrers. The leaves on the tree are bursting forth over the right hand diagonal half of the image. Behind them on the low skyline we see the houses and the undulating yellow field with its tractor tracks.

Visit our Website

Have a look at more of our images on www.compassphotography.co.uk

Equipment: Sony SLT-A65V, Tamron 16-300mm – setting vary