David Austin Roses – Overview

June 4, 2019 by Howard Dale Posted in Flowers, Minolta Maxxum AF 50mm f2.8 Macro Leave a comment

My wife loves gardening. She particularly loves roses, especially David Austin roses. She recently found some good local sources for such roses and she’s acquired a number of new ones for the garden.

For those, like me, who might not know who David Austin was he was the great guru growers of English roses. According to Wikipedia:

David Charles Henshaw Austin OBE (16 February 1926 at Albrighton – 18 December 2018 in the same village) was a British rose breeder and writer who lived in Shropshire, England. His emphasis was on breeding roses with the character and fragrance of old garden roses (such as gallicas, damasks and alba roses) but with the repeat-flowering ability and wide colour range of modern roses such as hybrid teas and floribundas.

You note from the above that he recently passed away, but his spirit lives on – and so does his company. Consequently I seem to have become, at least temporarily, a rose photographer. So far 12 of the new roses have opened up and I’ve been asked to take pictures of them (see future posts).

I’m not much of a gardener, but I have to admit that they’re pretty spectacular.

Above: Queen of Sweden with bug.

Taken with a Sony A77II and Minolta Maxxum AF 50mm f2.8 Macro.

Playing with a super wide angle lens

June 4, 2019 by Howard Dale Posted in Flowers, Landscapes Leave a comment

It’s a Tamron DI II SP 10-24mm f3.5-4.5.

I haven’t really used it enough yet to become familiar with its various characteristics. So I’ll leave it at that for now – other than to note that it has a really huge lens hood.

More than just roses in our garden

May 27, 2019 by Howard Dale Posted in Flowers Leave a comment

From earlier posts you might get the impression that we have only roses in our garden. This is far from the case. Although my wife loves roses above all other flowers, this doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want some variety in her garden. So here a few of her other flowers. Above Foxgloves.

Pink Evening Primrose.

Primula.

Lily of the Valley

Pink Lupine.

Purple Lupine.

Taken with a Sony A77II and Minolta AF 50mm f2.8 Macro.

Jubilee Celebration

May 17, 2019 by Howard Dale Posted in Flowers, Nature Leave a comment

It’s Spring, time for planting and my wife has been acquiring new roses. This is particularly so because she has located some good local sources for David Austin roses. He was the great guru of roses. Recently deceased his company continues the tradition.

This one is called “Jubilee Celebration” and according to the David Austin website:

We were honored to name this rose in commemoration of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. The large, domed flowers are a lovely rich pink with tints of soft gold on the underside of the petals, each bloom being elegantly held well above the foliage. Despite the size of the flowers, they are produced with exceptional freedom and continuity. The growth is vigorous, building up into a fine shrub. Very healthy and reliable. It has attractive, glossy foliage. The scent of the young flower is almost pure lemon zest, later becoming a delicious, fruity rose fragrance with hints of fresh lemon and raspberry. Excellent throughout the US including the challenging hot and humid climate of the south east.

It’s just emerging from its bud.

Taken with a Sony A77II and newly acquired Minolta Maxxum AF Macro 50mm f2.8.

Film Camera 2019/3 – Minolta XD – Results

May 14, 2019 by Howard Dale Posted in Film, Flowers, Landscapes, Statues, Things Leave a comment

First let me say that I wasn’t too happy with the film I used: Fujicolor Superia X-TRA400. I’ve used it before and it seems to me that it has a greenish cast, which I don’t find appealing. So why did I use it? The last few film cameras I used with black and white film and I had an urge to use color. The only color film that was readily available was this one.

Otherwise I was pleased with the results. Everything came out well focused and well exposed. In fact I’m struggling to find anything to say. Everything came out so well that it was almost as if the camera wasn’t there.

As mentioned in the earlier post the only problem I encountered was with framing. A few shots weren’t they way I’d wanted them to be. This could, however, be because my memory (and my eyes for that matter) are faulty.

Now I didn’t really try the camera out in difficult light. I was walking around taking pictures on a bright sunny day. In fact it was so bright that I regretted that I was only able to get ISO 400 film. I did’t use much of the camera’s functionality either, preferring to just put it in aperture priority and shoot away