View allAll Photos Tagged pressedflowers
Edible pressed flower on the cookie (I think cherry blossom 🌸 )
Not that big, I mean this ceramic bird is very little 🐦
from my colleague, on my desk at work
Right auto-tag was given ☺︎
It's not often that I discover a nature project waiting in my closet...a project that was conceived over three years ago. When looking through old photo albums placed on a high shelf, I discovered pressed flowers I'd placed between sheets of paper towels. I felt like a nature archeologist. I had no idea what I'd find when I peeled back the layers of toweling. What a find!
"Life is never what one dreams. It is seldom what one desires, but for the vital spirit and the eager mind, the future will always hold the search for buried treasure and the possibility of high adventure."
Ellen Glasgow
Discovering a pressed flower saved years ago is like finding buried treasure.
April 2023: A month in 30 pictures
I pressed these flowers from my garden a couple of years ago and haven't used them before. I can't remember what they are called.
I used my light panel again as we had a busy afternoon looking after our granddaughter and the light had all but gone by the time I got around to a photo.
It’s a long while since I have submitted anything to Macro Mondays, but I’ve often found leaf vein patterns interesting so I couldn’t resist this week’s theme of Leaf
This specimen was picked a year or two ago and pressed in a flower press, along with a lot of flowers from my garden. The advantage of doing this is that it flattens the subject making it much easier to focus across the extent of the thing. The image was taken today.
This portion of variegated ivy (which grew up a fence by my patio) has retained its colour pretty well over the intervening months. I also tried processing it in monochrome which really brings out the venation, but I preferred the pretty colour version here.
You can also play spot-the-(dried)-insect. There are at least two I have seen...
The leaves are really quite small and the image is less than three inches across as befits the MM brief.
The title I blame on a friend of mine who tends to favour puns in them… I fear it might be catching :)
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Macro Mondays :)
[Backlit with LED lightbox; tripod; delayed shutter; VR off; manual focus.
Developed in Capture One to take out the background warm and green the colour temperature.
Processed in Affinity, rotating to get the left stalk more or less vertical; square crop.
Curves in LAB mode to strengthen colours mildly. High Pass/Linear blend sharpening with a little Unsharp Mask as well. No vignette.]
press flower
It bloomed well this year. Two years before it damaged by insects, and took a rest last year.Holey!
Two monochromes for Donnerstagmonocrom today, both cooked in Silver Efex and split toned.
The first is of a succulent taken earlier this year at the RHS Rosemoor garden in Devon. I really struggled with this one and gave up twice. It’s been tweaked every which way before I finally abandoned it. It was meant to be a high key for a start…
The second is based on an image I took for this week’s Macro Monday but rejected in favour of a little leaf set that was about the same size but sweeter.
Commentary is the same for both.
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Monochrome Thursday :)
Pressed digitalis flower.
Last week I was rummaging in parts of my study that haven’t been delved since the Balrog was wakened. I discovered a folder which contained some flowers that I pressed quite a few years ago.
Flower pressing is something of a lost art these days which I think is a shame. Not only are they pretty in their own right but they give a unique perspective on the structure and delicate forms of plants and flowers.
Several of the pressings were of foxgloves, and I thought they were really quite interesting to look at.
One of the things I like about foxgloves is the pattern of spots on the inside throat of the flower which are there to guide flying insects to the nectar. The pressed flowers revealed the whole patterns of the individual flowers. You can’t normally see these without dissecting the plant.
The patterns are very variable, and the arrangements are curious. I like the way the splotches get smaller nearer the nectar.
The Macro Mondays theme this week was on patterns in nature. It’s a theme made in heaven (almost literally :) ) because there are so many interesting things you could take. I thought though it would be a good opportunity to share an image of one of my pressed foxglove flowers. I thought it would be a bit different…
The dried flower is two inches long. Yey!
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image, and the pattern. Happy Macro Mondays :)
[Tripod mount, delayed shutter, single image. Backlit using my cheap and cheerful LED lightbox (second time it’s been out this week :) ).
Quickly developed in Lightroom for colour and exposure with noise reduction but no sharpening.
In Affinity used Levels to make the backlit pure white, and used Curves in LAB mode to get the exposure more even and to emphasise the colours a little using steepened ramps for the colour channels. Sharpened with Unsharp Mask and that was it.]
Macro Mondays theme : Begins with the Letter P
Many thanks to all for your views, faves and comments – it's greatly appreciated.
Apart from photography my other love is cooking and I have a very large collection of cookery books. The current lockdown has given me the opportunity to browse through some of them.
Yesterday I was looking at Cooking Craft by S. Elizabeth Nash. The inside is inscribed "Anne Telfer 23/9/49' and as I was turning the pages I found these dried flowers.
I began to wonder what garden they were grown in, where it was and if there was a special occasion that had inspired Anne to press the flowers.
Image © Nicola Riley
October 2023: A month in 31 pictures
A last minute panic today as we were out with our grandson all day and had a busy evening. I was trying to think of another low key image when I had a lightbulb moment...or should I say a lightbox moment when I remembered the flowers I pressed last year. I popped a piece of rice paper onto of the lightbox added the flower and voila day 24 done and dusted and I can breathe a sigh of relief.