The ladybird and the flower
Here’s another picture featuring the magnolias from my trip to the Botanical Gardens last week. I was trying to filter out all of the colour apart from the red on the ladybird, but instead I was left with some pinkish tones in the rest of the image. I was going to fix it until I noticed it looked quite nice, so it turned out to be a bit of a happy accident! This is my first successful macro shot of an insect as well, I think it’s pretty appropriate now that it’s officially British summer time and that’s usually when you start seeing ladybirds everywhere, just waiting for the temperature to pick up a bit now. Enjoy!
Magnolia
This is another one of the shots I took yesterday at the Royal Botanical Gardens, so I wont say much. For a change I actually managed to find out what type of flower it is though, a magnolia. Enjoy!
Red and yellow flower
Our trip to Inverleith park today ended up being a trip to the Royal Botanical Gardens instead and I managed to get some great shots. The weather was great and we spent a good while walking about the gardens. I had never actually been before and I didn’t realise how big they were and how much effort went into looking after them. The gardens are considered one of the top four botanical gardens in the world and I would recommend it to anyone visiting the city, or anyone who lives nearby and hasn’t been for that matter, especially since entry to the gardens is free (entry to the glass houses is only £4/£3 concession). We didn’t go into the glass houses, but there were plenty of flowers and plants to shoot in the gardens, so there’ll probably be a few flower posts for the next few days! Funnily enough this shot came from the churchyard at the back of my flat, so apparently I didn’t need to go that far to find different flowers. We finished up the day with dinner and a drink in the pub, so all in all a good day!
As a side note I found this quote on a board in the visitors centre, which I thought was quite relevant given the recent interest in conservation, climate change etc, and made me realise that flowers like the one above aren’t just a pretty face, so to speak.
“Our species could not have evolved until plants had made the air that we breathe. They feed, shelter, fuel and cure us and if we want to secure our future we must tend to the leaves.”
Stephen Blackmore 2009
(Professor Stephen Blackmore, Regius Keeper of the Royal Edinburgh Botanical Gardens, is a world renowned conservationist and was recently honoured by the Queen for services to global plant conservation).
