More Sunny Daffodils and Garden Updates

Here are some more photos of daffodils from my dad's backyard garden. My miniature daffs (Tete-a-Tete) are still blooming happily in my front yard - that's one advantage to having a very cool spring, the bulbs last forever. Last week it snowed here, though it lasted less than an hour before disappearing. A fellow gardener noted yesterday that we have just a few weeks before the summer solstice and the days start getting shorter again. Everyone within hearing just groaned, since it so often feels like winter still.



Winter or not, I have planted a bunch of new perennials and bulbs recently. All of my mail-order plants have arrived in reasonably good shape, including the siberian irises from JPW Flowers; the LA lilies from Brent and Becky's Bulbs; the poppies and rhubarb from Burpee's; and the campanula, phlox, filipendula, and siberian iris from Bluestone Perennials. I finally got all six hellebores from the Northwest Garden Nursery out of their pots and into the ground - that took some rearranging to make space.



I've got my eye out for some new perennials to buy, especially 'Absolute Amethyst' candytuft (Iberis) from Proven Winners and 'Peachy Seduction' yarrow (Achillea) from Blooms of Bressingham. They've been added to the Wish List on my sidebar. Maybe I'll find them this season or maybe not until next year.



I have also been intrigued by the new Itoh peonies offered by Monrovia. I bought 'Kopper Kettle' last year and look forward to seeing it bloom for the first time in June. I'd also like to try 'Julia Rose', 'Takara' or 'Keiko'. Today I stopped by nearby Gibson's Nursery and didn't see any of those three, so I came home with an old-fashioned 'Pink Parfait' peony instead. I will keep checking back to see if any of the pink Itohs come into stock.



I keep drawing plans for where to plant more bulbs in the front yard this fall - crocus, colchicums, hyacinths, more mini-daffodils. It's been so nice to have these little bulbs blooming for the past couple of months, while the backyard perennials and shrubs have been sleeping still. Meanwhile the 'Salmon Parrot' (or was it 'Apricot Parrot' - will have to check my notes) and 'Salmon Impression' tulips are just about ready to start blooming out front.



Vivid colors are getting ready to pop in the west garden - rosy and rosy-peach tulips, golden Basket of Gold, and many shades of blue-violet in Aubrieta, hyacinths and dwarf iris. Plus the unusual 'Hair' alliums are getting ready to bloom. I've got my camera ready to shoot lots of pictures when the flower buds finally burst open.



Purple buds are showing on the lilac shrubs and new leaves are unfurling everywhere in the garden. I'm looking forward to seeing the first blooms ever from some of the perennials planted last year - siberian and japanese irises, peonies, astrantia, columbines, yarrow. There's plenty to get excited about in the garden - now we just need some warmer weather to enjoy it!

Pink Tulips and Pink Daffodils Are Not the Same Color

Many of you gardeners already know that 'pink' daffodils aren't exactly pink. Not mauve or bubble-gum pink, at least, like these tulips. So no matter what the catalog/website picture shows, you have to plan for peachy-pink or coral-pink daffodils.



I caught all these pictures in my dad's backyard when we visited for Easter. His garden, just 100 miles away in Moses Lake, is several weeks farther along than mine.



Over the past couple of years he has planted a new bed in the middle of the backyard, and when we visited there were several hundred daffodils in bloom along with tulips, a few hyacinths and fritillaria.



I used techniques from my last post when shooting these pictures. Since the house shades this bed right before sunset, these pictures were taken at about 5 pm with the sun behind the flowers. Aren't these true pink tulips dreamy?



But even more dreamy were the hundreds of daffodils in bloom. I ordered these next photos to show the progression of color as the double daffodils open and then fade over several days.



You can see that these 'pink' daffodils open a pinkish-orange color. I forgot to ask my dad which hybrid these are, so I can't name them, sorry.



The flowers in the background are blurry because I mostly used a 1.4 f-stop. Maybe a couple of photos go up to 2.0, but not any higher than that.



And the backlighting makes the flowers and background glow, just as Jose Villa promised. Don't you just feel warm when looking at these sun-filled shots? Me too, despite the rainy grey weather outside my window right now.



Anyway, as the daffodils age the peachy-pink color softens and softens . . .



. . . until the flowers are mostly white with a pastel pinky-peach center. Still not bubblegum, or even cotton candy, and definitely not mauve. But a pretty color nevertheless.

Wedding Photo Tips Adapted for Garden Photos

This month I bought 'Fine Art Wedding Photography' by top photographer Jose Villa (available from Amazon here) and have enjoyed studying his methods and thinking of ways to apply them to my garden photography. Here are five of his tips that can apply, along with my attempts to illustrate his points with photos of the spring bulbs in my garden. Included are 'Tete-a-Tete' mini daffodils, 'Spring Beauty' scilla and 'Grande Maitre' crocus. Of course my photos are nowhere near as beautiful as his, which you can see on his blog here.



1. Photograph with your aperture wide open (ie with a low f-stop). In layman's terms, this creates a blurry background. It requires leaving full auto mode and going at least to Av mode, if not full manual. Unlike Mr. Villa, I am not quick enough with manual to use it much, so I set my camera to Av mode so I can push the f-stop all the way down to 2.8 or 1.4, depending on which lens I'm using, and let the camera figure out the rest of the settings. A bonus to using a low f-stop is that it reduces the blurriness from camera shake, which is especially helpful in dimmer light. You can see in the photo above that not all of the daffodils are on focus thanks to an f-stop of 2.0.



2. Take advantage of the soft skylight that lasts about 10 minutes after sunset (or before sunrise). Mr. Villa goes so far as to check sunset times on days when he's shooting a wedding so he can make sure to have the newlyweds available for photos during this time. Well, most photographers already know that the best light is right around sunrise or sunset. A cloudy day can produce similar light. The nice thing about this type of light is that there aren't many shadows, so you can shoot in any direction. This light also lets you capture good colors instead of the washed-out hues that can occur in strong sunlight.



3. Backlight your subject when shooting in strong sunlight. When I first started taking pictures for this blog, my instinct was to do exactly the opposite, and shoot with the sun at my back. But backlighting (shooting with the sun behind your subject) creates especially pretty pictures when the light is low just before sunset, with the flowers glowing. The photo above shows the same clump of daffodils and scilla as the photo above it, only one is backlit with the setting sun and the other is lit with soft skylight. The backlit flowers are very striking, though perhaps you can see true colors and detail better with the softer lighting.



4. Expose for the shadows. This applies to backlit subjects. To do this (sorry for the non-technical terms here), make sure that the center red dot on your screen flashes/beeps right on the point (often the center of a flower) where you want the best focus and correct exposure. This will cause you to lose some detail in the 'blown out' highlights of the background (which will be blurry anyway since you're shooting with a low f-stop), but will keep your focal point clear and properly exposed. This makes the overall photo brighter, with soft colors and glowing light. In the photo above, you can see white splotches in the background that have no detail thanks to the low f-stop and overexposure, but they don't detract from the flowers in the focal point, and the whole photo is filled with light.



5. Overexpose for soft colors and glowing light. I have a hard time giving up vivid colors to create this effect, but I tried for this post. You can see that the photo above is slightly brighter and the colors softer than the one below. Mr. Villa overexposes by adjusting his manual ISO setting to one f-stop below the speed of the film (so he sets 3200-speed film at 1600-speed). Since I'm not that proficient in manual and I don't use film, I adjusted the exposure on my computer by using Photoshop Elements' RAW editor.



Of course most of us aren't going to be able to create photographs as beautiful as Jose Villa's, but experimenting with his methods could help us capture some shots that are better than expected. I'm certainly having fun with his tips, and can't wait to try them out while photographing my children, too. If you try any of these tips and have success, be sure to leave a comment and post a link to your photo(s). Best wishes!