A gorgeous tulip centerpiece Spun made with flowers from PCC.

I love how each layer gets stronger and stronger, supporting the frailty and beauty of the elements above. Such a strong column together, bringing joy and life into our home.

Thank you my Love for such a keen eye.

The insane rain has subsided and made way for the flowers to bloom. What a stellar way to kick off a Friday full of productivity and regained sanity with workload. Soon the sunshine will be on my face and winter will be behind me.

Spun has a lot of prospective stuff on the horizon as well. So many things are blooming. I feel like I need another flower / spring reference…

Pretty sure this was for last night’s alley prom.

I love the Lenora St Lookout. Spun took me here early on in our relationship for a late night walkabout of Belltown and her favorite spots. This spot, albeit frequented by a lot of homeless who love to leave overnight gifts on the stairs for early morning commuters such as myself, is flanked by gardens and ends up jutting out to one of the best views of the Puget Sound, Olympics, and West Seattle in the city.

For the past two years and I’ve been watching these vines grow. They take over the trees, flow off the side of the bridge and have made for review cycle metaphors. Today, like most days when I walk down the stairs, I was checking to see if the light was right to shoot up at the hanging vines. I’ve been wanting a shot of this for some time now because they hang about two to three stories from above, swinging in the cool morning breeze. Perfect. But alas, I didn’t have the right lens … so I improvised and shot something more geometric than literal, using the Viaduct, pillar, and bridge above to create a sweet negative space. I’ll likely post up some of the graffiti from here next week. There are two pieces I’ve been meaning to share for some time now.

In a bizarre way, I felt as if I was peering into the world of this tiny basement Belltown apartment which was completely drenched in shadows. Bars on the mesh reinforced windows kept the darkness pent up. Yet emerging from the shadows was a pale glimmer of a rose. Hastily I shot one photo because I didn’t want to invade the privacy of the rose, or the people living in this cave. Call it voyeuristic or just inquisitive, but I wonder what exists behind the layer of dust and darkness and why only a single rose exists to break down the barrier of blackness.

Inspired by the rose, I set out on a quest for poetry … more specifically a Sonnet. Quickly I found one from Shakespeare (go figure) that seems to be very apropos. Sonnet 54:

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo’d and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

Likewise No Rose That In A Garden Ever Grew by Edna St. Vincent Millay seemed to hit the darkness and beauty of the rose quite well.

No rose that in a garden ever grew,
In Homer’s or in Omar’s or in mine,
Though buried under centuries of fine
Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew
Forever, and forever lost from view,
But must again in fragrance rich as wine
The grey aisles of the air incarnadine
When the old summers surge into a new.
Thus when I swear, “I love with all my heart,”
‘Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear,
‘Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece;
And thus as well my love must lose some part
Of what it is, had Helen been less fair,
Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece.

So I’m rocking those two favorite apps of mine again this morning to get this photo, Pro HDR (used in a previous post Sunshine and Graffiti Soaked Alleyways ) and my well used, but loaded with surprises, The Best Camera. So I threw on the “Paris” filter to give the shot some really high contrast, but surprisingly it totally flattened out the yellow to be a muted grey.

After playing around with a couple settings in Pro HDR I finally got the shot above. Below is is what happens if you put in the photos the way it expects you to, lights properly exposed in the lights, darks properly exposed for the dark photo. Note that this still will work, even if one is black and white as you can see here.

So what sort of HDR tricks have you pulled out of your camera bag? Send me a link and I’ll include it in the post. Always good to share the love on how-to’s for these sorts of things.

This time, I’m in the park near our house where the sun was just poking up over the Cascade Mountains and there was still some frost hanging on for a final fleeting moment. While there are some daisies in here, I didn’t make a crown or necklace to rock at the office … and if I had, I would have asked Spun to make it for me with her years of playing soccer as a kid that really just resulted in arts and crafts time outdoors. Ok, enough rambling, more macro flower shots.

However, amazingly, nothing in this post is retouched. Everything is shot with my iPhone 4 with a macro lens from photojojo’s iPhone lens pack. I’ve shot some other photos before of a tiny little snail, candied pecans in a salad, and a shaving brush. However, nothing … nothing compares to these.

Enjoy!