Seems to be the season these are finally out in full bloom! There are a few spots in the city that have an abundance of these, noticed a few just outside my office so I snagged a few shots at lunch.

According to Wikipedia:

A cherry blossom is the name for the flower of cherry trees known as Sakura (Japanese kanji : æ¡œ or æ«»; hiragana: さくら) in Japanese. In English, the word “sakura” is equivalent to the Japanese flowering cherry.^[1][2] Cherry fruit (known in Japanese as sakuranbo) comes from another species of tree.

However, this could also be of the ornamental flowering crab apple variety. I can’t tell – can you?

Took the kids to go horseback riding on Easter Sunday… one of the horses really wanted me to take his picture…

Took this the other night after the sun went down, around 10:30pm. ISO set to 200, f/4, 5 second exposure, started around 70mm and zoomed in over the 5 seconds to 28mm. Hand held. Couple quick actions in Photoshop to boost the color.

Makes an excellent wallpaper… I might upload a larger size for that purpose later.

Seems about this time of year the occasional dandelion shot pops up on everyone’s photo streams or photo blogs… I was going to pass but out for lunch yesterday, I just couldn’t resist! Shot with my Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens.

Don’t you just want to blow those seeds away?

As a bonus, while shooting this I saw this little guy and he hung around long enough for me to toss on my close-up lens filters as well as my Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens and grab a few shots.

Really like the added touch textures add to some images. This is a macro detail of some tulip petals with a texture added in Photoshop set to overlay layer mode.

Free texture was made available by Joy on Flickr.

Visited the St. Joachim Catholic Cemetery in town during lunch… it may sound odd but I really enjoyed this photo walk. I only hit about half the cemetery but I really like the TTV stuff for this.

I know some people think visiting cemeteries for the purpose of a photo shoot is crass and wrong. I don’t. The way I see it, and taking into account some of the tombstones I saw, I’m paying more attention and respect than has been paid since who knows when. I also find it keeps me grounded, makes me think, question my mortality and what I’ve done and where I’m going…

I’ve set up an account over at Imagekind, they offer all sorts of sizes and mediums for photo prints. Checkout the prints I currently have available. If you see on on my Flickr stream that you are interested in, let me know and I can put it up on Imagekind as well.

You may also contact me directly if you are interested in any photos as prints.

Headed out to the Muttart Conservatory here in town, heard they were closing soon until October so I figured I should make my way there sooner… as well it was cold out so it was a relatively warm spot to snap some shots. These are some of the ones I liked the best. These were all taken with my Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens. Please click the links below to view the actual images on my photostream, this mosaic doesn’t do them justice!

1. Allamanda cathartica ‘Williamsii’ (Golden-Trumpet), 2. Zantedeschia aethiopica (Easter Lily), 3. Zantedeschia aethiopica (Easter Lily), 4. Zantedeschia aethiopica (Easter Lily), 5. Zantedeschia aethiopica (Easter Lily), 6. Red Lily, 7. Haemanthus coccineus (Blood Lily), 8. Haemanthus coccineus (Blood Lily), 9. Purple flowers, 10. Begonia X rex-cultorum (Rex Begonia), 11. Palm leaf, 12. Yellow (Tiger?) Orchid, 13. Purple Orchid, 14. Purple Orchid

Headed out to the Muttart Conservatory here in town, heard they were closing soon until October so I figured I should make my way there sooner… as well it was cold out so it was a relatively warm spot to snap some shots. These are some of the ones I liked the best. These were all taken with my Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens. Please click the links below to view the actual images on my photostream, this mosaic doesn’t do them justice!

1. Euphorbia Milii (Crown-of-Thorns), 2. Anigozanthos (Kangaroo Paw), 3. Cactus, 4. Cactus, 5. Pink flowers, 6. Notocactus magnifica (Ball Cactus)