Rose568


Rose568, originally uploaded by carolWorldLeader.

“This is my dog. He has three legs, one ear, and no tail. We call him lucky. Here lucky, lucky, lucky….”

I went out shooting at the Texas Capitol this weekend. At first, I wasn’t very inspired. I didn’t want to get the obligatory shot, you know the one, from inside the rotunda, looking up. I don’t know why, maybe my neck was stiff or something. I lugged the tripod and camera gear all the way down Congress Ave., and then just didn’t feel like shooting that silly cliched Capitol building like everybody else.

The light was really good outside, as it was almost starting to rain a bit. Somebody in my photo group mentioned, “I was out in the rose garden…”

Kathy and I were like, “Rose garden?” I didn’t even know that the Capitol had a rose garden. So, it was off to the flowers for us.

I starting shooting then. As Kathy said, “if it’s flowers and Carol’s shooting it, it’s gotta be good.” This is so true, as I usually just walk on by the usual “bluebonnets in the field” type of shots. But not this time, I had rose thorns sticking me, I was that close. (Yup, I actually climbed into this crop of flowers, thorns and all. And, at one point, we had to stick our camera gear under our clothing, since it started to rain a bit more than we thought the digital gear could handle.)

And, truth be told we got really lucky. These were spectacular roses, the light was good, and everything just clicked. Maybe only a week later, or one spring storm later, we would have gotten nothing but the thorns.

I tried to do some Georgia O’Keefe inspired flowers, this is my attmept at trying to make the roses look very feminine and soft. I’m having trouble now because I keep wanting to punch up the color in photoshop and there really is such a thing as “too saturated” (trust me on this one.)

Funny thing, we had an afternoon shoot at a church downtown. One of the fellows there, David, said to me, “We thought we were going to have to pry you guys out of that rose garden.”

Yup. Welcome to springtime flower power. Crowbar optional.

Until next time…

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