Mosaic Benches

Although these mosaic benches aren't adorned with Christmas lights, they benefit from the Christmas lighting around them.

There are many benches like these around the park, and many areas with this beautiful mosaic tile work. There used to be shallow pools in the Wedding Gardens, but they were difficult to keep up and the Koi kept dying from the algae, so they've closed down and now have more of this same mosaic tile work covering them. I'm still trying to decide which I like better; but of course, I don't have to maintain them.

The Florida Botanical Gardens is one of St Petersburg/Largo's treasures. I you're ever visiting the area, check them out. The best part is there is no fee to get into this beautiful park. It's full of flowers year 'round with lots of water and even some wildlife. It's Florida at its best!

White Rose

Recently, I took a trip to the Florida Botanical Gardens. The Roses are in bloom and it smelled so good at the garden. This is one of my favorites taken that day.

Florida has been going through a drought and it's really affecting the plants, flowers and even the trees in my yard. Thank Heaven we've had rain the past couple days. It won't help with the drought unless we get rain for many days, but our grass is starting to come back and the trees are looking a lot healthier. I was afraid we were going to loose our Avocado tree. That would've been a shame. I love Avocado.

Anyway, back to the Rose. My friend brought a spray bottle of water and sprayed this flower just before I made this photo. What a difference it makes. It made the flower come alive! Spray bottles also help when photographing butterflies, insects and dragonflies, by the way.

While I admit I'm a lazy photographer, this day I set out to get some great images. I brought along my closeup filters and used them. Most of the time they just sit in my camera bag adding weight to an already heavy bag. For this shot, I added a +1 closeup lens and it was just enough to allow me to fill the frame with this beautiful Rose. I also chose to use an fairly small aperture because closeup lenses tend to make the depth of field really shallow and I wanted the whole rose to be in focus. This was shot with my Canon 40D, 75-300mm lens at 190mm, +1 closeup filter, at F8, 1/250th, and ISO 400. I'm including the technical data because several people have asked me for it. Just keep in mind that different cameras and lenses react differently to the same settings. These settings are just a starting point. You'll have to judge the results for yourself with your own equipment.

As I look at this shot, I'm trying to remember what park I took it at. I cheated; I looked in the metadata (thank goodness for keywords) and as it turned out, it was taken at Florida Botanical Gardens about 3 weeks ago.

One of my favorite flowers is in the foreground, it is the Indian Blanket flower. They can be found growing most anywhere in this area. I love the colors. I also like lily pads, and although these don't have beautiful waterlilies sitting amongst them, there are a few Spatterdocks peeking out here and there.

Florida Botanical Gardens is a fairly new park. I remember I stumbled across it by accident and it just happened to be the day it was dedicated. Since then, I've taken many a walk through it's beautiful gardens.

Orchids

My friends and I went to the Florida Botanical Gardens to check what was in bloom a couple weeks ago and, of course, to shoot what we found.

These Orchids were in the Orchid area and I was struck by the way they grow, all in a row on their stem. When I looked through the viewfinder in my camera, the first thing that came to mind was the pretty curve they formed and how they'd look with a diagonal composition. Well, I shot it this way, then shot the same flowers in several other angles, but this one is the one I like best.

Orchids are hard to identify, and I apologize for not knowing the variety. There are so many species within the Orchid family only an expert could tell them all apart.

Unknown Flower

Today my friends and I went to the Florida Botanical Gardens in Largo for our weekly get-together. We originally planned to go to Gatorland in Orlando until Stacy reminded us that this was Spring Break time, Good Friday and Easter weekend. Traffic in Orlando and the theme parks would be brutal. Since we already live here, we can go to Gatorland anytime, so we opted to stay in Tampa Bay for our weekly shoot.

I've taken photos of this flower before and was able to identify it, but wouldn't you know, the name just slipped my mind. If anyone reading this blog can ID it, I'd be most grateful.

I love the softness of the cone-type top of this and the little yellow blossoms at the mid section. The color combination is gorgeous. I'd love to try to grow these in my yard, but without a name it would be difficult to find them at the nursery.

I think they might be some kind of Bromeliad, but they also resemble Heliconias too. A Google search didn't provide any answers, either.

Tomorrow we're taking a trolley tour in Tampa again. This always proves to be a fun time. I'm looking forward to it.