Nature’s Beauty – Up Close and Personal

Photography is a wonderful avocation. There’s never a lack of things to fill the camera’s frame of view with, in many interesting ways. Nature’s beauty is a constant inspiration for many photographers. The pictures almost take themselves.

The resolution of the latest crop of digital cameras is now approaching the level of the finest film cameras. The macro settings on these cameras also allow you to get up close and personal with the intricate details of nature’s beauty. Much of it hitherto scarcely imagined from a normal viewing distance.

In this photo gallery, I’m presenting some of my best pictures of nature’s beauty in all its splendor. Many spectacular flowers and many insects are on display. I hope you’re just as amazed at the wonderful symbiotic, but fragile relationship between these flowers and insects.

Ok, it’s time to get up close and personal with nature’s beauty..at its best.

^Bee on Red Clover – In late summer, many a green space is covered with wild flowers of all kinds. The red clover (also white) seems to be a favourite of bees and other insects, so it wasn’t hard to find one, and get very close without interrupting its pollen gathering.

^ Black-eyed Susan – Black-eyed Susan (a biennial), seems to self-seed so much it appears to come up every year, just not in the same place. What’s interesting here is the tiny loops visible in the stamen. I’ve never noticed this before, but now that I’ve taken many close up and personal photos of nature’s beauty, I’m seeing it more and more. Sunflowers also have similar tiny loops on their face.

^ Coleus – Coleus is an unusual annual. Although it doesn’t sport any flowers as such, it makes up for it with many variegated patterns of colour on its leaves.

^ Queen Anne's Lace – You can hardly go anywhere in a meadow without coming across Queen Anne's Lace, pictured here. It grows wild, and could be considered a weed. Actually, this is very close up, since the ants you see are no more than 6mm long (1/4”). These are indeed very tiny flowers.

^ Pink flowers (ballerina roses?) –Thanks to Green Lotus for suggesting that they are Ballerina roses. I'm cross-checking many sources to be sure. I spotted them in a local park. In this shot, they appear to glow, with the afternoon sun behind them.

^ Deep red Peonies – It was hard to capture the truly gorgeous, velvety texture and colour which nature’s beauty has bestowed on these deep red peonies. I’ve given it my best shot though.

^ Fly on a Potentilla – A Potentilla (or Cinqfoil), is a perennial shrub, which is covered with dozens of these beautiful yellow flowers, throughout the summer months. I captured this fly getting a tasty treat from one of the flowers.

^ Burgundy creme Bearded Iris – I’m sure it has a proper name, though I’m not sure, but I couldn’t resist getting up close and personal with this stunning example of nature’s beauty. Note the intricate yellow anthers, and the interesting streaks on the lower petals. Wonderful.

^ Pink Peony – Another springtime flower is the popular Peony, a perennial shrub which sports these large (4”) multi-petalled flowers. The darker red accents in the middle really make this pink peony a showpiece. They smell great too.

^ Grasshopper – While taking some pictures of nearby flowers, I caught this grasshopper out of the corner of my eye, so I just had to get up close without disturbing him. I managed to catch him upright, so unfortunately you can’t see its wings in this picture.

^ Yellow Dahlia – Nothing can match the variety of nature’s beauty, in a single species as can be found in dahlias. The colours, shapes and sizes of these flowers is simply amazing. The red streaks on this luscious yellow dahlia provide an interesting accent.

^ Orange Begonia – This orange tuberous begonia is a real stunner, especially on slightly overcast days, when the daylight seems to make many flowers glow in a way that you just don’t see on sunny days. This picture is of course taken on a sunny day, but in the shade.

^ 2 Insects on a Purple Thistle – This was a lucky find. The thistle is a common, but beautiful weed, especially up close, where I found some kind of bee, plus a very strange insect on the top of the purple flower. You may not be able to see it on this scale, but when zoomed in on the full resolution picture on my computer, it sure is a strange creature. One of my favourite pictures.

^ Deep red Dianthus – I saw this beautiful red dianthus flower at the local nursery. Luckily I had my camera with me. I was intrigued by the white markings and very fine hair-like scillia, which you may not be able to see at this scale. Very interesting.

^ Wasp on a leaf – I captured this close up shot of a wasp, quietly resting on a leaf, on a lazy, late summer afternoon.

^ Burgundy Daylily – Nature’s beauty doesn’t get any better than the impressive shade of burgundy and yellow throat of this daylily. The relatively small scale and resolution of the web page doesn’t do this flower justice, believe me.

Five of these pictures were taken with a Fuji Zoom 2600 2-megapixel point-and-shoot camera, which I had for 10 years, and it served me very well. It finally broke earlier this year (2011). I then purchased a Canon Powershot A1200, a very good, but inexpensive 12-megapixel point-and-shoot camera. The remaining 11 shots are from this camera.

Although I do have a tripod, all of these pictures are hand-held macro shots.

The photos were fixed up, resized and colour-adjusted using Corel Photo-Paint. I’ve attempted to retain the true-to-life colour of the flowers as much as possible. Still, everyone’s computer monitor is a bit different, but not enough to keep Nature’s Beauty from putting its best face forward.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these pictures as much as I enjoyed capturing them.

Note: You can click on any of the pictures, to see a slide show featuring higher resolution versions of these pictures.

As always, these pictures are copyright (2011) by timorous+ and may not be copied or used without my consent. Please respect my wishes. Thank you.