Category: photography

From “Lilies” in Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi:

“There is a school that claims to detest the scent of lilies: ‘like a funeral’ is the phrase. Personally, I don’t associate lilies with funerals, but if I did, what a way to go! No flower perfume is too strong for me. The stupendous lily bouquets that stand on our grand piano during July and August send an essence up the back stairs that finds its way into my bedroom and my dreams at night, and I am sorry for those whose senses don’t allow them to enjoy this pleasure.”

From Upstream by Mary Oliver:

“Understand from the first this certainty. Butterflies don’t write books, neither do lilies…. Which doesn’t mean they don’t know, in their own way, what they are. That they don’t know they are alive — that they don’t feel, that action upon which all consciousness sits, lightly or heavily. Humility is the prize of the leaf-world….”

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Hello!

This is the seventh of ten posts in my “Lilies on Black Backgrounds” series. Like the sixth post, this one features photos taken in a section of Oakland Cemetery’s gardens with a large batch of saturated-pink and salmon-colored blooms, many of them manifesting most-excellent form.

The previous posts in this series are:

Lilies on Black Backgrounds: A Photo Project (1 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (2 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (3 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (4 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (5 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (6 of 10)

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Flowers in the Night Garden” in Colour in My Garden by Louise Beebe Wilder:

“A sally down the garden path has quite the quality of a high adventure. We are accompanied by troops of ghostly flowers — nameless at night. At their sign the shadows part before and close in behind us, seeming to cut off retreat.

“Here a Lily shape is cut against the dark.”

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Hello!

This is the sixth of ten posts in my “Lilies on Black Backgrounds” series. This post features photos taken in a section of Oakland Cemetery’s gardens with a large batch of similar lilies in various shades of pink and salmon colors, some with deep red highlights at the edges of the petals.

The previous posts in this series are:

Lilies on Black Backgrounds: A Photo Project (1 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (2 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (3 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (4 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (5 of 10)

Thanks for taking a look!

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From Lilies by Naomi Slade:

“In cottage-style gardens, lilies are glorious when combined with roses and sweet peas, clematis and honeysuckle. In the border they complement the other colourful herbaceous plants, and they can play a part in tropical schemes as well. Planting taller varieties into a mixed or shrub border is often successful as the twiggy stems support the lily flowers and provide ongoing interest….

“In naturalistic gardens, the elegant Turk’s caps excel…. If they are happy, they may spread to spectacular effect.”

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Hello! This is the fifth of ten posts in my “Lilies on Black Backgrounds” series.

The previous posts in this series are:

Lilies on Black Backgrounds: A Photo Project (1 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (2 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (3 of 10)

Lilies on Black Backgrounds (4 of 10)

Thanks for taking a look!

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From “Thirty Years’ Bloom” in Through the Garden Gate by Elizabeth Lawrence:

“My mother recorded the weather and the date of the first flower of every plant as it came into bloom. At intervals, such as high spring, midsummer and Thanksgiving, she would take a census of everything in bloom at that time. She was very systematic about her daily records. Each morning she would go out with her little black book and write down the names of the flowers that had bloomed since the day before. This is the way records should be kept….

“Mine are not as well done, for one day I may go my rounds in the morning, and the next I may go in the afternoon. Then I may skip a few days, and when I do, it is hard to remember whether the lily bloomed on Monday or on Tuesday.”

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Surprise! More lilies!

For a description of this series, see the the first post: Lilies on Black Backgrounds: A Photo Project (1 of 10).

The second post is Lilies on Black Backgrounds (2 of 10); and the third post is Lilies on Black Backgrounds (3 of 10).

Thanks for taking a look!

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From Through the Garden Gate by Elizabeth Lawrence:

“Someone left an orange daylily in our mail box….”

From Lilies for English Gardens by Gertrude Jekyll:

“Though introduced from China not much more than a hundred years ago, the Tiger Lily is among those that we cherish as old English garden flowers, so familiar is it, not only in our gardens, but in old pictures and in the samplers and embroideries of our great-grandmothers….

“[The] Tiger is the latest flowering of our Lilies, being in full bloom in September. Its bold, turn-cap form is so well known that it can want no description, except to draw attention to its remarkable colour, a soft salmon-orange, that can be matched by but few other flowers…. The black spots and dark stems and deep-brown, rust-coloured anthers combine to make a grand garden flower. “

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Hello!

Continuing my “Lilies on Black Backgrounds” project, here are some new galleries featuring deep-orange daylilies and a batch of tiger lilies.

For a description of the project, see the first post in this series: Lilies on Black Backgrounds: A Photo Project (1 of 10). The second post in the series is Lilies on Black Backgrounds (2 of 10). Click here (or scroll down) if you would like to see before-and-after versions of three of the tiger lilies.

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Here are before-and-after versions of three of the tiger lilies.

Some of the magic tricks I described in my first post for this series — Lilies on Black Backgrounds: A Photo Project (1 of 10) — worked especially well with these images. As you can see from the before versions below, the backgrounds contained a lot of extra “information” that I covered with my black brush. Despite the intricate structure of these flowers — including the tiny anthers (you know, like antlers, but for flowers) — the increased depth of field I got with a higher ISO and narrower apertures (f/22 or f/27, for example) made it (relatively) easy to remove the backgrounds while keeping the details intact.

Select the first image if you would like to compare the before and after versions in a slideshow.

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Thanks for taking a look!