Finally, the time has come for shooting some bud photos. It was a surprise for me yesterday, to see these magnolia buds, as there is still snow outside, even ice at some parts that face north and even though it's not so cold anymore, the temperature is still around 0°C.
Magnolia for me is a very mysterious flower, a kind of queen among spring flowers. It's the beginning of February and the buds are already out and of considerable size. Magnolia is known to flower first, at the same time with snowdrops and violets, or right after the previous two opens.
The flowers are beautiful, I'm always admiring them, but somehow they look awful on the photos. Why? I have no idea. Basically the flower has a few petals, which can be nice when it starts to open, but then it's like the whole flower is falling apart. I've never thought it would be such a huge difference between what you see with your own eyes and what you see on the photo.
So when I got there, I saw these buds, which brought smile to my face as I don't think I've ever seen magnolia buds. So I took out my camera and tried to take some photos. Yes, the keyword here is tried.
Very soon I had to realize the light was far from enough and the photos were too dark.
The only solution I saw was to use the flash, in broad daylight. I guess we can't have all, right?
When finally I was able figure out the light and the rest of the settings, I thought I was ready to take some photos, but had to realize I wasn't there yet as I had bigger challenges to face. Then the Macro function of my camera said hold your camera 3cm - 5cm away from the subject. This may sound normal, it's just that the wind was blowing so hard, my subject (the magnolia bud) was swinging 10cm left and right, in and out of my camera focus.
It was quite funny, not to say tragic-comical, but what can you do? Mother nature has its plans and you have to obey her. After some time I was able to take some decent photos though.
So in case you've never seen magnolia buds, this is how it looks like. It's long and hairy. These are not the petals though, this is just the outer layer, that will be detached from the petals when the time comes. Now that I think of it, this may be the protection system for the bud to be kept warm. As I said, it's still cold, especially during nights.
There are quite a lot of pines and at the time of my visit, there are pine cones all over the place. I tried to find some seeds but there were none.
There are several types of pines, most likely each has a name of their own, but I'm not so well-versed, so have no idea. This one has long leaves. After running a search I was able to learn, that these are called needles.
This is not the Christmas tree type, but I still like it as it's interesting.
This is the other type, which may not even be pine. It's not a tree, these are bushes. Looks like it's Juniperus virginiana, also known as red cedar.
My next target would be snowdrops and violets. The latter is easy as you can find them everywhere, growing wildly, but snowdrops are protected, you have no right to pick them, there's a fine to pay if you do. I'm not looking to break the low but no worry as there's no place where you can find snowdrops in the city.
What is interesting is that it is protected, yet you can buy it at the flower vendors. I suppose they are growing them, maybe that is allowed.
