Amazing. I have waited and waited… and now it’s finally here. The flower season. In the past weeks I’ve gotten in the occasional flower shot, but the floodgates really opened today. I’ve been walking around with camera in hand most of the day, and finished with a car ride to the lake and got my first landscape shot since the winter. In floral terms, I’ve shot marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), dwarf marsh violet (Viola epipsila), wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella), wood forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica), wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa), apple flower, wild pansy (Viola tricolor) and then a yellow flower I haven’t been able to ID yet (help appreciated, see below). And I also got shots of a daffodil but I deleted them, and a backlit maple leaf which I didn’t delete, bringing the total of today’s species to ten. If this doesn’t look like summer, then I don’t know what!

I had this idea for wood anemone to shoot straight from above and frame the flower in the middle, with the leaves forming an OOF triangle in the BG. I tried it last week but unfortunately I only shot the flower in sunlight and found afterwards that the shadows from the upcurved petals spoiled the image. But luckily, the wood anemone were still blooming so I had another chance and made sure to get a shaded image to even out the exposure. In this image, I’ve used the vignetting tool in Lightroom to darken the corners (the top left corner was bothering me a little) and I’m quite happy about the result – couldn’t really get much closer to my pre-visualisation.

This is my mystery flower. It was growing right next to marsh marigold on the shore of a small pond, which is a sort of extension of the abandoned garden I blogged about a while ago. It has big leaves, reminded me of coltsfoot leaves, almost round with slightly serrated edges. I have a picture of the leaves and the full flower if needed.

Oh what to do tomorrow. I know a spot where the lily of the valley have already started blooming (!) and common and heath dog violets are forming blue pillows on the forest floor. There are cowslip on every lawn (except mine) but I have a secured a visit to someone’s garden to shoot them, only it will take a few days until they are fully grown. I really fancy taking a shot at marsh violets, which will be tricky because they are so small and just disappear in the grass while achieving sufficient DOF is a challenge of its own. And that unidentified flower will get some morning sun… and I want to perfect my backlit maple leaf shot… and I definitely need some good pictures of the forget-me-nots. Looks like another busy day tomorrow!