The effects of winter on Queen Anne’s Lace near Beaver Pond make fragile, tendrils moving quietly at water’s edge but the effects of spring are beginning to work their budding miracles.

Photo Tip# 3: Document one plant you love no matter what stage it is in.

©Pat Coakley 2010

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**Select photographs from my blogs and wide archive are available for purchase at www.patcoakley.com

Exhibit A: pink peony.

PAT COAKLEY 2010

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Select photographs from this blog and my wider archive can be purchased at www.patcoakley.com

This season my tips shall include some ways to totally break nature’s rules as well as a few photographic ones.

The rule broken here?   Nature’s rule.  At night, a crocus totally closes up its petals.  Shut tight until the morning sun or heat opens them again.

But I was wondering what they might look at night.  So, this is rule # 1 of the 2010 Singular Sensation season:

Play God.  Go ahead.  It doesn’t work in any other phase of living except creativity.

Decide how you’d like to see your blooms and then use your photoshop skills and multiple images and masking to bring your imagination to life.

You did learn Photoshop over the winter, right?

©Pat Coakley 2010

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

**Select photographs from this blog and my wider archive can be purchased at www.patcoakley.com.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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Lately, I’ve been betwixt and between, moody, unhinged.  The only subject I have shot every day has been the sky.  During the growing season, I shoot flowers and plants every day.  It is an anchor that moors me in the creative harbor.  I know where I belong.  So, as the growing season ends here in New England, I find myself not only without a mooring, but without a harbor.

In trying to find one, I noticed one thing.  I shoot the skies now, every day.   I may go off in search of other subjects as well, but I start my day with skies and, sometimes, end my day with them as well.

A meteorologist is needed to explain this phenomenon but I have noticed that during the summer, the skies are not nearly as dramatic with morning or evening clouds as in the fall and winter.

Perhaps they can explain it or would tell me I am wrong.  It is simply that I have not been looking up, they might say.

So, Singular Sensation- Winter Edition, shall be skies.

As the days shorten here in New England, looking up shall be my habit.  My winter harbor.  My mooring.

Y’know…I feel better already.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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I listened to an interview with the writer, Sherman Alexie, the other day and he talked about artists living in the “in-between”.  In his case, he identifies this as the territory of truths inbetween being an indigenous Native American but an immigrant to the colonists’ culture that took power.

Blew me down, this idea.  Not only this explanation of his own “in-between” status but attributing it to the territory of every artist.

So, I got out my wide angle lens and put it on the ground and shot upward to show the spaces in-between the dessicated Queen Anne’s Lace along the pond, a territory of truths that is mine for some (as yet) unknown reason.

This is a perfect thought to end this series, don’t you think?

©Pat Coakley 2009

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By now, it’s clear that getting beautiful silhouette shots of dying Queen Anne’s Lace is like shooting fish in a barrel.  You show up at dawn with your camera and you are guaranteed of something good.

And, this morning, I did just that and once again could have wowed with another silhouette shot because the dawn was foggy and mysterious but I decided to work a bit harder.

It is not as mysterious or conventionally beautiful, but in its own unique way, definitely Fall.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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Once more with feeling…and a little spectacular reflection of the sunrise on the pond didn’t hurt either.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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This is the third image of a week long series about how the end of the growing season does not mean the end of a photographer’s growth.  In fact, the challenges of photographing nature, past peak, can make a good photographer even better.  My focus shall be the Queen Anne’s Lace.  Here is the first in the Series. Second.

Arriving early in the morning, just before sunrise, helps create a mood that enhances the ethereal beauty of a tangle of Queen Anne stems and their bare blossom heads.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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This is the second image of a week long series about how the end of the growing season does not mean the end of a photographer’s growth.  In fact, the challenges of photographing nature, past peak, can make a good photographer even better.  My focus shall be the Queen Anne’s Lace.  Here is the first in the Series.

Growing season officially comes to an end tonight.  The National Weather Service has issued a New England wide frost.  We’ve had one frost warning prior but that was for “northern” areas.

Tonight, though, we’re going down to the low 30′s and I’ll be out cutting every flower visible to the human eye before it does.

I am also going to begin a series on “Just Because Growing Season Ends, Doesn’t Mean You Do”.  In other words, take advantage of this transition period between Fall and Winter and become a better photographer.  The end of growing season is the beginning of experimental season for nature’s photographers.

Take photographs of things past bloom, decaying, plants and flowers that no longer beckon you  (and the rest of the world) to take a photograph.  Work on your composition.  Lighting.  Focus.   Use nature to reveal itself. Be part of the revelation.

I have chosen my favorite Queen Anne Lace by Beaver Pond to study.  Each day this week, I am going to post another photograph of this plant, it’s white lacy blooms of June and July long gone.

But, fascinating they still are.  I just have to work harder, that’s all, to show it to you.

©Pat Coakley

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