Tobacco Plants with Clouds - August 2016

Tuesday I was trying to find NE Park in Greensboro which is in a rural part of Guilford Co.  Tobacco* at one time was a huge industry in North Carolina.  This was before the effects of smoking tobacco caused significant lung disease and people were educated about the dangers to health and longevity.   I saw these plants not quite ready for harvesting as the leaves had not gotten yellow shade to them.. I did not see any plants with blossoms in this field.   It was a bright sunny day with fluffy clouds in the blue sky.   Taken with Nikon P600 - downsized for the web, but no additional editing.  You can see evidence of the red clay soil between the plants which is typical of this region of NC.   The plant is part of the genus Nicotiana and of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family. While more than 70 species of tobacco are known, the chief commercial crop is *N. tabacum .

LeBauer Park - Overhead Sculpture - Evening Glow

Went to Sunday Music in the Park Concert tonight at LeBauer Park, Greensboro, NC.  This Park just openend on August 8th. An overhead sculpture was commissioned for 1 million dollars. The artist is Janet Echelman. The image on the Left was taken with the sun glowing on it later in the evening and is the original.  It was take at about 6:00 PM. EDST.  The image on the Right was cropped to get a vertical section of the middle, then saturated film filter was used to enhance x3.in PSE11. iPhone 5C with native camera used to capture image.  The image is lighted after dark with lights but I did not stay to see this tonite.  Hope to catch at a later time, perhaps the Folk Festival in a couple weeks.  See more info about the sculpture and artist::
http://www.greensboro.com/blogs/gotriad_extra/spotlight-turns-to-lebauer-park-sculpture-video/article_72e21074-a6d3-5b41-98f3-08e56192c69c.html 

Mushroom Designs - Neighbor's Yard - 8/19/16 World Photo Day

This was actually taken on World Photo Day 8/19/2016 but not posted till 8/21/2016.  My neighbor has some mushrooms growing around the stump of a tree.  I liked the design of the edges of the fungi.  It was a bright sunny day but we can't always choose the lighting but I did try to darken the exposure. .This was taken with iPhone 5C, Camera+ app. with slight editing in PSE to sharpen the edges more. I did try to takeimages with another camera and use a white umbrella for diffusion screen and will try to post that one to compare.  

Tree Limbs Fell with Storm and Removal in Progress

On Aug 6th during the night there was a storm and our maple tree out front lost 2 big limbs.   Tree removal guy came and said the tree was diseased and we would continue to have trouble.  So, we had it removed.  It is making a huge difference in the view of our house from the streeet. The image on the left shows the tree limbs with the missing length.at about 12 N and 3 P.   The image on the right shows the main tree trunk before the final removal, stump grinding and grass planted in that area. The are to the right of the house had a lot of rose bushes removed.  Images taken with iPhone 5C with minor edits of both images PSE 11.

Parsley in my Garden with Black Swallowtail Caterpillars

Look what was feasting on my parsley in the garden?  Some black swallowtail caterpillars. This is only one little plant and I worry what will happen when they eat up all the foilage. Taken with iPhone 5C Minor post editing in PSE 11.  The left image has a slight vignette applied.  Can  you see 4 in the right image?.

Rust on Mailbox - Texture + Prisma Postprocessing iOS app

Taken 7/26/2016 when I was walking in the neighborhood and spotted a mailbox with rust & paint on it.  It had just stopped raining and sky was overcast. The surface was damp. This rust had some texture and thought this would be an image   I could play with some filters in postprocessing. Taken with an iPhone 6, shutter speed 1/25th sec @ f22. (This setting is not really good to take a handheld image and the mailbox did curve in the area I was taking as a close up. I did try to keep in the same plane as much as I could). It would have been better to use a tripod.  The left image is the original as taken.   I did edit by increasing the contrast and sharpened to the max before starting to work with image on the right.  I used Prisma app to achiever the saturation in the R image.  If you can expand to see more detail, you will see all different kinds of texture that looks more like an abstract drawing with different colors.  The Prisma app is new for iOS phone and can render different types of artistic effects.  I don't remember the filter chosen as I had experimented a lot until I got the look I wanted.  This image was shown at the TOPS Camera Club on 8/5/206.

Tiger Lilly & Carolina Lily in Bloom - Neighborhood

My neighbor has a lot of orange lilies, blooming along her fence. Some are the common tiger lilyHemerocallis fulva. that you see along the road sides near ditches and would remind you of a daylily. Some have single petals but the one on the right has double petals.  It was taken later in the afternoon.  The left image is Lilium michauxii often referred to as the Carolina Lily and the state wildfower of NC. Some people confuse the blossoms that hang down with another wildflower know as Turk's Cap Lily which has a defining characteristic of a star shape with the stamens in the center.  Commonly found at higher elevations along the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC.  I have seen some pink/red cultivars at Duke Gardens.like the image on the left.  Taken with iPhone 6.  Edited in PSE 11.

Green Coneflower or Is It. Compared to Echinacea Purple (Purple Coneflower)

I was walking in the neighborhood last Thurs. The blossoms on the left I saw were like a green cone flower....but it had some weird foliage growing out of the top of it.  First of all the color was green.  I am much more familiar, with pink, yellow or coral/orange cultivars.  If I took a picture of the flower oin the stalk it would have been too monochromatic and not enough negative space.  The best I could tell from an internet search and response on the Internet is that the plant might be "Green Envy" coneflower.   The native Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpura) is the image on the right.  The image on the left has the flowers in a small vase.  In the forefront of the image is a green looking cone flower with very little projections noted in the cone head,  but if you look at the petals you may see some slight pink in the center.  Theses petals do not hang down, nor are the as close together as the purple coneflower.  The depth of field is shallow, so, it was difficult to get a sharp image of the foliage in back but you can defiintely see it has projections not normally associated with the coneflower. Taken with iPhone 6.  Edited in PSE.   .

Banana Blossom CU - NC State University, Raleigh, NC

This image should have been posted  about August lst. On Sunday July, 31st,  I went to J.B. Raulston Arboretum.  This Arboretum is associated with NC State University in Raleigh, NC.   There were summer flowers in bloom and I was lucky enough to find a banana blossom to photograph.  I took a Close Up with my iPhone 5C.with Camera+ app Macro mode.   Edited in PSE, minor cloning, increased highlights and midtones, black vignette applied.