Category Archives: flowers

Flower Power

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This week I knew I had my (hopefully) final chemotherapy session (although I still have weeks on the horrible, toxic pills). On Monday the weather was gorgeous, so after going for the blood tests I have to do two days befor each chemo poison torture session, I went for a walk, got lunch, then walked more, and then more. All the way from Gorgie to Haymarket, to the West End of the New Town, then Saint Cuthbert’s and Princes Street Gardens (where I found to my delight the Nepali Scottish Mela was taking place), then round King’s Stables Road to the Grassmarket, West Port, then the Meadows and finally a well-earned seat in Cloisters for a rest, drink and read my book.

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(Above: I was really pleaased with the way the focus turned out on this shot, the foreground sharp, the background in soft focus – this effect is called ‘bokeh’ – and the contrasting colours. There’s even a wee bee on a flower in the foreground. Below: another bokeh shot, the sharp flower in the foreground, the rearwards one in soft, blurred focus giving depth to the shot)

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Of course the camera was also out for its stroll, and the light was so good (half the work done for taking a good pic is having the right light), and I took dozens of photos of everything, from street photography of people to architecture to flowers. Lots and lots of flowers, as it turned out.

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(wee bee nestling inside a flower on the lower right)

I make no apology, the light made the colurs so vibrant, I kept taking more photos, stopping frequently when I saw more. In among this long, waking nightmare of my cancer year, the beautiful light and the colours of the flowers and the buzzing of bees landing on them (you can see some wee busy bees in several pics), all combined to make me feel alive and make me smile and just drink it in (and, me being me, to capture that light and colour in a photograph and share it).

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(For the obvious reasons, I normally shoot in colour for flower pics, but some simply work better in monochrome, especially when they have that strong contrast being partly in the sunlight, partly in shadows. I don’t grayscale in Photoshop, if you see my pic in B&W it means I choose to shoot in B&W, I think the effect works better; also I don’t like monkeying with my photos in Photoshop like a lot of people do these days, I am old-fashioned, I think a photographer should do most of their work through the lens, picking mode, angle, composition as they shoot. That’s what photography is about, capturing what you see, not altering it all afterwards)

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I absolutely tired myself out – my battery charge is very limited as the chemo screws your basic biochemstistry, the thing your body relies on, but it was worth it for a good day when I got to smile, to marvel at the beauty of the world and not think about bloody cancer for a few hours.

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I’m not going to post all of them here – you can, as ever, check them all out on the Woolamaloo Fickr stream (now well north of 30, 000 pictures uploaded!), where you can also view the much larger versions, as well as my many other photos. Hope the flower images brightened up your day a little.

After The Rain

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After The Rain 01

A week of very mixed weather, bright, warm, summer sunlight and heavy showers and gusty winds, then back to sunshine. While unpredicatable, this weather does offer up one of the smallest but loveliest of simple pleasures: raindrops on flower petals. Sometimes something as simple and everyday, such as the stroll to work, yields such precious, little moments.

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The older I get, the more important it feels to pause, even if only for a few seconds, to admire such things, when the world offers them up to us; they make our days more magical, and remind us, regardless of how full the news is of dreadful happenings, that we can still find little, magical moments, if we pause and look.

Slowly Unfurling Beauty

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Random recent scenes

Princes Street this evening on the way home, basking in late sunshine; outside the oh-so-posh Jenners department store a bagpiper in full highland dress is jamming with two black musicians playing some sort of ethnic variation on tom-tom drums. They’re clearly all enjoying themselves as are the locals and tourists who stop to listen to this mix of African and Scottish. It sounds brilliant.

On my way in and out to work I pass some spectacularly beautiful displays of bright, colourful, fresh flowers in Princes Street Gardens and the crescents at the West End; in the bright sunlight the flowers almost glow. The council mismanages a lot of things in Edinburgh but kudos to the gardners for creating such beautiful, eye-catching displays that just make your day nicer by being there.

Making the most of the sudden burst of warm, summer-like weather we head down the coast where near the beach at the Fidra Lighthouse I bump into my friend Claudia with her visiting parents. After a very long walk all the way down the beach to North Berwick we’re licking our yummy ice creams when my big cousin and her husband suddenly appear.

Bus to work on Monday; as I am getting off one of my friends from the book group is getting on although I only have a chance to say hello to her as we pass. Clearly it is my week for randomly bumping into friends and family as I go about. Who will be the next Guest Star in the ongoing soap opera of life?

Walking down Middle Meadow Walk a temporary wooden wall hiding the building works in the old Royal Infirmary which has been covered with posters for Fringe shows is now peeling and torn, scraps flapping in the breeze now it is all over. The grass of the Meadows still shows the marks of the recently departed marquees and big top from shows.

Hot, sunny day, warmer than most of the summer – great. Except it is too hot and dreadfully airless at my desk at work and I’m dying for some fresh air all afternoon – a good excuse to meet a friend and sit outside a pub on the way home drinking cold beer in the fresh air and watching the sun slowly dipping towards the horizon.

Sitting in Beanscene with Mel, enjoying coffee and cake I notice they have details on how to buy the antiqued leather sofas they have in the cafe – the sign advertising this is simple but brilliant “order a sofa to go”. Oh yes, please, can I have a skinny latte, triple choc muffin and a sofa to go?

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It’s snowing flower petals

The blossoms are out in force on the trees for spring; today has been quite breezy and pink and white petals are fluttering from the blossoms, down from the trees, swirling around on the pavement. The road gutter is full of petals, as if a huge wedding procession had just been by. I pass all the blossoming trees in Princes Street Gardens on the way home and the contrast of the white and pink with the resurgence of deep green as the trees come back to life is gorgeous. A couple of hours later sitting at home and the wind picks up; the blinds rattle near the open window and looking out of my third floor I can see what looks like flakes of snow.

Actually they are petals, blowing from the trees on the other side of the tenements opposite me, being caught and blown up several stories, over the roof then down again into the street. As anyone who has ever lived in a Victorian tenement are knows the long, high stone structures create a criss-crossing urban canyon with swirling wind directions all their own. Tonight it made blossom petals dance outside my windows several floors up in the air as the sun was setting. Beautiful