war in the veggie garden

I’ve been remiss in posting on my blog, so when I overslept this morning, missing my morning trip to the gym, I thought I would take the opportunity to share with you why by taking some photos.  I’ve been waging war in the vegetable garden.  Last week, I found my first two tomato fruitworms burrowing into my beautiful ‘Juliet’ Roma-grape tomatoes.  So I ‘took care of them’ and applied BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) on the eggs of the young; I’m growing everything organically.  Ok, I lost a few to a common pest and helped mother nature take care of controlling the remaining pest population.

Then I came home to a ruin of tasty slicing tomatoes still dangling from the vine.  Something was taking various sized chunks out of them.  I had installed a deer fence around the garden  in the spring, so I knew some smaller critter was enjoying my growing harvest.  Initially, I thought it might be squirrels or chipmunks since the neighbors had problems with squirrels last year, devastating their entire harvest in one weekend; I’m growing indeterminate heirlooms (Giant Belgium Pink and  Costoluto Fiorentino) so I will have a continual crop all summer and hopefully avoid a complete loss.  Last weekend I spent an entire afternoon constructing a netted cover for the garden.  But I missed one small corner since I had just barely enough netting to finish the job… and that’s why I found out who the thief was, a bird.  He found the small hole and took one last bite before I secured that hole with additional netting and some zip-ties.

So far so good for this week.  I’ve been able to harvest the home grown tomatoes and make some delicious tomato sauce or ‘gravy’ as commonly called here.  I’ve never tasted such sweet sauce from home grown tomatoes.  Definitely worth waging war in the veggie garden.

gently upon a soul

This past weekend, I visited Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.  Many photographers have worked this ruin/museum and produced amazing images, inspiring me to visit a local place I have not seen in the 14 years I’ve lived here.  I’ve also started experimenting more with dramatic light and knew this site would be challenging and offer a good exercise.  I never expected to come away so excited about the images I captured on that day… so excited to photograph stills without anything living in them, so excited that I’m planning to return and to look for additional sites, my awareness now keen to develop a new project.

I have not been able to put into words yet what it is about making these images that captures me so.  But it’s not about gloom and doom as much as it’s about the light, about illumination, opportunity, spirituality, the connection to the good in the world… an odd paradox for a prison.  I suppose I’ll have to think about this.  But the ray of light in this image reminds me of God rays coming through a cloudy sky laying their gentle beams of light upon the earth… here the single beam laying its hand gently upon a soul.

For more images from this day, visit the New Work gallery on my website: Rhoda Maurer Photography at Photoshelter.com

hot papaya

With tomorrow’s solstice and the official beginning of summer, I thought I would post this image of a relatively new coneflower introduced by my friends at Plants Nouveau, Echinacea ‘Hot Papaya’.  I found it blooming last night in the entrance garden of the Scott Arboretum.  And although I took the typical portrait shot with as much detail as my 105mm macro lens could capture at f/45, I quickly found the sultry petals luring me in for a closer look.  So I recomposed and found f/7.1 to capture enough detail that you can still infer it’s a flower, yet with a shallow enough depth of field to soften the flow… an image more reflective of the plant’s name!

summer is here

Since we’ve had exceptionally high daytime and soil temperatures in SE Pennsylvania this late spring, many perennials are sending out flowers earlier than I expected.  I found this Penstemon pinifolius (pineneedle beartongue) blooming on the hillside at Chanticleer Garden last weekend backed by Stipa tennuissima, or Mexican feather grass.  I intentionally blurred the grass out of focus to hightlight the form of the penstemon.  I first explored the symmetry of the individual flowers along the inflorescence.  But soon I became more fascinated by the leading lines of the flower parts and created this off-center image.

I am excited to see these blooming along with Clematis texensis and other nectar food sources for hummingbirds in local gardens. But I have not seen any hummingbirds yet in the garden this year.  Sure hope they arrive soon to feast upon these wonderful plants.

spring in a parking lot

After spending much of my time in my home garden this spring cultivating new ground for a vegetable garden and building a protective fence of harvested bamboo from the edge of the property, I am getting back to posting new images taken this spring. Although it doesn’t feel much like spring today in Pennsylvania with temperatures reaching 91F today.  But the tomatoes are enjoying the heat and I am hoping for a nice crop of heirlooms later this summer.

I’ve seen several posts from fellow photographers on the west coast of dogwoods in bloom, so I thought I might also post a dogwood I found this spring, Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Chief’ in a parking lot.  The amazing red bracts caught my attention from over 200ft away as they popped against the fresh green lawn on the hill behind it.  This was one of those moments when I know I’ve found something special. Maybe not a spectacular image, but something that resonates with my creative spirit that will influence my life and my art.

spring 2011

Every day is different… and this past week spring has decided to keep things moving at a furious pace.

I walk a mile every morning and night for my commute to work; and every walk I notice something else popping out of the ground or coming to life from a branch.  I prefer a slower spring, one where I can savor the transition and slow down enough from our culture’s work/life expectations enough to notice the magic that is happening in a continual flow before us.

On my walk last night, this native Pachysandra procumbens captured my attention enough to stop the furious pace of my day; and before I knew it I had spent 30 minutes wondering at its tiny blossoms.  I try not to think about anything during this time… Oh sure I think about technical aspects of taking the image with the given conditions, but then I set myself free.  I just allow experiences to be noticed and they in turn help form my approach to photographing what I see.

I’ve been struggling to make time for a meditation practice beyond yoga.  And I think I’ve finally realized… I’m struggling because I already have a meditation practice I enjoy.  I just need to spend more time practicing and allow that practice to flow in the direction it’s meant to.

finding beauty

Today I decided to revisit a plant I photographed last week; the turkish filbert had the female flowers out today along with the male catkins!  I have a few good captures I’ll post later on my website.  But close by another plant caught my attention… not because it was in spring bloom, but because all the ingredients to capture a fleeting moment were just right.  Needles on a dead branch of Pinus uncinata, damaged from the difficult winter we had here in Philadelphia, were radiating a warm glow against the blue sky.  Other branches were also broken, needles past this stage of luminosity and a much drabber brown.  But this branch was at just the right phase of compartmentalizing off, giving me the opportunity to capture the fleeting beautiful burnt orange color… finding beauty in this moment of a conifer’s decline.

gentle inspiration

As you might already know from following my blog, I’ve been patiently waiting on new eyeglasses for several weeks now. And I’ve been using this excuse for not getting out and shooting some macro work; I almost always focus manually since the auto-focus jumps around so much.  But I was gently inspired by a friend of mine who is taking beautiful images with a dislocated shoulder… So I needed to figure out a way to keep shooting too.  Last Friday the weather was unbelievable… nearly 70F here in Pennsylvania and luckily I had scheduled a half day off from my day job.  So I got out my camera and shot all my macro work hand held and with auto-focus.  Surprisingly, I came home with eight or more keepers in two hours of shooting.  I found the expected witch hazel and winter aconites.  But I also found some other marvelous signs of spring including this Turkish filbert, Corylus corluna, sending forth these catkins.

my best images of 2010

A lot of photographers are posting their top 10 images of the year 2010 this week, so I thought I would jump on the bandwagon too.   Besides, it’s another chance to practice editing skills!  Of course I still have some 2010 images to process; and I’m sure others do too, but here are the top 10 I have ready to date.  Enjoy!

salt crystals

Winter has definitely had her grip on eastern Pennsylvania this month.  It’s been in the 20s every night and cloudy and below freezing every day with a howling wind.  And then last night we had our first snowfall… just enough to dust the ground and cause traffic nightmares, but too late for any chance of an evening shoot after work.  So I’m inside editing tonight and it’s a good thing since it has been almost two weeks since my last post.  This dusting has definitely excited me about getting some good snowfall, frost or ice for photography.  But I may have to wait until January or February at this point as the weather is forecast to be above freezing during the day for the next week or so.  Christmas lights just might have to do for the next week while the sun fully sets before I’m off from my day job.

So I came across the image above while editing… it’s from Death Valley this fall, near the salt flats after the sun came over the horizon and side-lit the salt crystals.  Not frost or snow… but another wonder of nature.