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The National Garden Bureau has selected the beautiful dahlia as the bulb of the year. Dahlia is a genus of tuberous plants that are members of the Asteraceae family; related species include the sunflower, daisy, chrysanthemum, and zinnia. They grow from small, brown, biennial tubers planted in the spring.
canon 5D MKIII
canon 100mm F2.8L
with a visitor, in the grass in our back yard. It had survived a recent mowing. I love its color, and I respect its tenacity.
The Dandelion
O dandelion, rich and haughty,
King of village flowers!
Each day is coronation time,
You have no humble hours.
I like to see you bring a troop
To beat the blue-grass spears,
To scorn the lawn-mower that would be
Like fate’s triumphant shears.
Your yellow heads are cut away,
It seems your reign is o’er.
By noon you raise a sea of stars
More golden than before.
—Vachel Lindsay
Bog cotton is a plant that is uniquely symbolic of the Irish landscape. Bog cotton is found on blanket and raised bogs in Ireland.
It comes in two Hare’s tail Cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum) and Common Cottongrass (Eriophorum angustifolium).
The two plants are very similar, with white fluffy cotton seed heads and grassy leaves which are seen from June each year. The white cotton flowers with seeds attached are easily dispersed by the wind.
Gousses de graines à aigrettes
Common Milkweed - Asclépiade commune
Asclepias syriaca L. (Asclepiadaceae-Asclépiadacées)
Asclepias syriaca, commonly called common milkweed, butterfly flower, silkweed, silky swallow-wort, and Virginia silkweed,
Asclépiade commune, herbe à ouate, herbe aux perruches,
L'Asclépiade de Syrie. Soie d'Amérique
This is from the same type of cycad but a different plant from the one I've been showing you. Have I mentioned that these are all from palm trees? Well, the cat's out of the bag. Anyhow . . .
As it is with all things living, there comes a time when life has left. All that remains is the corporeal evidence of its existence, the structure that housed life and made it possible. Here, with all of its pollen expended, is the result. The plant has no need to keep the structure once its purpose is fulfilled. It would be costly in terms of energy maintenance and structural support. Instead, it is shed, discarded, and left to desiccate and return to the earth.
This is an up-close shot of the withering effects of death on these structures. Grim? Maybe, but death is as much a part of the story of life as conception.
This is a star trail image that I produced from a photograph with an exposure time of approximately 1 hour 46 minutes. I took the photograph using the camera on my iPhone 6s Plus. It shows the early morning trails looking to the SSW over the top floor of our apartment block. I find the image to be remarkable for two reasons - (1) that it was photographed using a camera on a mobile phone, and (2) that it was taken in a suburban setting of a moderate size city (Canberra has a population of around 370,000). There is a moderate amount of ambient light ("light pollution"), but not so much that it would prevent the camera from being able to capture features that were not visible to the naked eye.
This image is the product of 3 input shots - the long exposure star trails photograph, an image taken with the camera lens covered but with the same settings as the long exposure image (known as the "dark frame"), and a photograph of the sky and the foreground elements taken from the same location under better lighting conditions (i.e., the "framing" or "foreground" image).
The dark frame response contains a combination of random and systematic sensor noise. The same systematic sensor noise will be present in the long exposure shot, whilst the random sensor noise will be different in the two images. If the systematic noise is more significant (as it was in this instance), it will be beneficial from a signal to noise perspective to subtract the response in the dark frame from the long exposure. This can be done by employing the "Difference" blend mode in any of the numerous layer blending apps.
After some separate enhancement of the star trails image (sans systematic sensor noise) and the foreground image, these images were blended using the "Luminance" blend mode.
The point in the left-centre of the image, about which the trails appear to be rotating, is known as the South Celestial Pole. The North Celestial Pole is marked by the bright star "Polaris". In contrast, the South Celestial Pole is remarkably devoid of bright stars.
The brightest trail in the image, towards the bottom right corner, is from the star Canopus in the constellation of Carina. The moderately bright trails above this belong to the stars of the false cross (delta Velorum, kappa Velorum, iota Carinae, and epsilon Carinae) and other stars in the constellations of Carina and Vela. The false cross is sometimes mistaken from the Southern Cross, but the latter is smaller and located around 20 degrees away, just outside the the top left corner of the image. The various straight lines, dotted lines, and short line segments are related to satellites and aircraft.
Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
Image Capture ...
iPhone 6s Plus - The photographs were taken with the back-facing camera on an iPhone 6s Plus.
NightCap Pro - This camera replacement app was used in Star Trail mode to capture the star trail and dark frames, each with 4032 x 3024 pixels (12MP). The star trail image had a total exposure length of 6366.87 seconds (106 minutes 6.87 seconds) (1 hour 46 minutes 6.87 seconds). The dark frame had a total exposure length of 67 seconds. The focus, temperature, shutter speed and ISO were manually set to infinite, 1/3 seconds, and 800, respectively. The aperture of the iPhone camera is fixed at f2.2. The foreground image (4032 x 3024 pixels, 12 MP) was shot in Long Exposure mode with manual focus, temperature, shutter speed and ISO values of infinite, 3200K, 1/3 seconds, and 800 respectively. The total exposure length was 39 seconds.
Noise reduction ...
iExplorer - Used the iExplorer Mac OS-X app (by Macroplant) to transfer the images from my iPhone 6s Plus via Lightning-USB cable to my MacBook Air 11".
photoFXlab - I used this Mac OS-X app to access the Topaz Simplify and DeNoise plugins. These plugins significantly outperform my "go-to" apps for noise reduction on iOS devices (e.g., Noiseware, Photogene, Photoshop Express). The noise in this case is high ISO speckle luminance and chroma noise.
Topaz Simplify 4 - Detail Removal and Enhancement - "Dust Removal III" preset.
Topaz DeNoise 5 - Used the "JPEG - Strongest" preset with various custom settings (Clean Color 1.0, Grain 0.2) N.B., I did not add grain to the dark frame image.)
PhotoSync - Transferred the images to my iPad Mini (with retina) to continue the post-processing and posting activities.
Post-processing ...
Image Blender - Loaded the star trails and dark frame images, and output an image using 100% of the "Difference" blend mode.
Photogene - Applied the Auto lighting and Auto histogram lighting adjustments to both remaining images.
Snapseed - Applied various overall lighting adjustments to the star trail image (i.e., Highlights, Saturation, Contrast, Warmth). Also applied Selective lighting adjustments to darken the bottom corners.
Image Blender - Combined the star trail and foreground images using the Luminance blend mode.
Photoshop Express - Applied the De-Noise and Sharpen filters.
Filterstorm - Added a small amount of Grain (Noise) to the image.
ExifEditor - Transferred the EXIF data from the original star trail photograph to the final image.
Other ...
pUniverse (Pocket Universe) - I used this iOS app to identify various celestial features in the image.
10x objective, focus stacked.
Brian Tomlinson photography:
Website: www.bt-photography.co.uk
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bt_photo