Photo Play #11: More Texas Flora

Now that I can sit at the computer for longer than an hour each day, I'm pretty much caught up with replying to comments and blog reading.  My goal the next couple of weeks is to get caught up on the photography posts.  Quilting posts will resume on Sunday for sure.  

We spent almost a week in Texas back in March hanging out with Grad Girl and checking out some old haunts. Three favorite places we visited that trip were the Antique Rose Emporium, Old Baylor and Brenham.  All of them great places to take lots of photos, especially during peak wildflower season.  

The photos posted below have not been edited other than to reduce the file size for posting. 

The Antique Rose Emporium is actually a garden center that specializes in roses. They do sell other plants, but most of their collection is roses.  They have beautiful grounds and a lovely garden. If you've followed my blog for awhile, the pink roses that I routinely post in the spring from our garden were purchased at this garden center.  The rose was named the Katy rose because they found it growing along I-10 near Katy, TX. if you know anything about Houston, you know the traffic along I-10 is massive. I figure if a rose could survive along that corridor, then I couldn't kill it.  That has proved to be true. But I digress, here are the photos from the more recent visit. 

This photo of a Firecracker rose was taken with my I-phone 12.  I zoomed in a bit and took a shot. I love the fade from pink to orange to yellow. (Yes, two of these rose bushes came home with me).  So you don't need a fancy camera to get beautiful photos. Most of the I-phones now take really nice photos.  That's nice when you don't really want to drag out your DSLR (or it's just not practical, such as a place of business where people are shopping).  

Another I-phone photo.  This is probably my favorite Blue Bonnet photo from our trip.  It's a little grainy at the top, but it makes me think of an oil painting, not that it's a bad photo.  The advantage of photographing under cloudy skies is that you can get much better color, the sun can sometimes wash out the brilliance. I really like the deep purples and bright whites in this photo.  The garden center had a wild flower patch as part of their seasonal garden.  The grass was trampled in a few places, so you could tell that someone had plopped their child or puppy in the middle of the plot to get some photos. 

Old Baylor park is just down the road a bit from the garden center.  It's the original site of Baylor University which is now located in Waco, TX. Here's all that's left of the university (Canon 70D/Tamron 18-400 telephoto lens)

That's a Live Oak in the foreground. They are really impressive trees.  They don't grow very tall but they have the most wonderful wide tree tops with the most textured and gnarly branches.  

If you want Texas wild flower photos, Old Baylor is a favorite spot to get them. Same camera but switched to a Sigma 105 mm macro lens.

These yellow Coreopsis are another common spring wildflower in South Texas.  There are whole fields of these in some places.  It's hard not to love these sunny flowers.  

This is my favorite Indian Paintbrush photo from this trip.  I struggle with reds on my DSLR, but the overcast sky helped and I got the settings just right. This is the very top of the flower.  I love the reds and pinks with just a touch of green. That's it for my wildflower photos from this trip.  

My photos from Brenham didn't make the cut as some of my best from the trip, but I'm going to share a couple because Brenham has the most wonderful mural art.  Both photos were taken with my I-Phone 12. 

 

The owls are such fun, love the detail in that mural. Yellow roses are a favorite, so how could I not snap a shot of that. 

So what did I learn while taking these photos. 

1. You have to take a lot of photos and play with your settings to get an exceptional image.  I have in excess of 100 photos of the wildflowers. Most of those are good photographs and I'm happy with them. 

2.  The I-Phone camera works just fine. In some cases it works better than the DSLR does (probably because I'm still figuring out all the controls).  I'm beginning to utilize my I-phone more. It's something I always have with me and I'm beginning to realize you can still get a good photo even if you don't have the fancy camera with you.      

3.  Stopping to change your lens can make all the difference between an OK photo and a really good one.