It felt like it was 110 degrees thanks to the heat and hight humidity in the D.C. Area this past Sunday. Sounds like a good day to hide in an air conditioned house right? Not for me, time to head to Green Spring Gardens for some flower photos. (Click to see more photos) As I have written in earlier posts, Green Spring Gardens in Fairfax County, Va., is probably my favorite place in Northern Virginia to photograph flowers.

Green Spring has wonderful landscaping, a variety of flowers always in bloom, is easy to reach and has no admission fee.

For a fun challenge, sometimes I like to see what I can shoot in less than 60 minutes. I arrived at about 4 p.m. and the sun was still pretty high. Midday light is not the most desirable illumination, but thanks to Green Spring’s abundance of tall trees and what I call mini-gardens spread across the park, there is plenty of shade to buffer the strong light if need be.

The only thing out of the ordinary Sunday was I did not encounter the bunny I usually see near the vegetable patch and there did not seem to be many butterflies. Perhaps it was just too hot for them. Thanks for dropping in on my blog today. I hope you enjoyed your visit.

Quick Photo Tip- When photographing flowers, I always try to shoot as tight and close up as I can, without creating additional shadows. You always have to consider depth of field
on these shots. The closer you get with a macro lens, the more critical the focus becomes. Unless you are going for a very isolated focus field, you need to make sure your depth of field is deep enough to get a good deal of the flower in focus.