"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 
Lilies of the Epic Kind (1 of 2)

Lilies of the Epic Kind (1 of 2)

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

“Some lilies are more vigorous than others. The June-flowering Asiatics don’t care what you do to them. They can be cut quite close to the ground and still return in full force the following year. The others seem to know they are more beautiful and expensive… and to cut them severely is to court their oblivion.”

From The Garden Triumphant: Victorian Garden Taste by David Stuart:

“You would know by the scent of the lilies that summer was here.”


The lilies in the galleries below — a variation of Tiny Epic Asiatic Lilies — are not actually tiny but they’re definitely epic. The flower petals unfold to the size of the open hand of a small person (me!), and with their striking colors and textures, they make great subjects for close-up photography. The petals are quite thick and silky to the touch, and you can almost feel tiny bumps where it looks like they’ve been sprinkled with cinnamon radiating from the center.

Unlike some lilies, these blooms lasted nearly a week — which gave me plenty of time to aim a macro lens at them and try different combinations of light and different camera settings before I settled on these photos. I’ve featured them here before (see, from last year, Epic Lilies (1 of 3), Epic Lilies (2 of 3), Epic Lilies (3 of 3)), so this time I concentrated on photographing just one or two isolated blooms and getting the focus, color, and textures as accurate as they appeared to me in the garden.

Thanks for taking a look!








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