Samuels Rose Garden

Yesterday morning I was up early, meeting a friend at the Samuels Rose Garden.  He’s a talented young photographer and had suggested that we get there at sunrise.  He was right: the light was great at that time of day.  The rose garden in located in the grounds of an historic home in Nelson, Broadgreen.

I got there first, before the sun was up.  The light was still very cold, but was great for bringing out the detail.  This rose was called “Clodagh McRedy”:

It was hard to get a full bloom on its own, they nestled together.  I liked this youngster peeking through its older siblings:

Then the sun opped up over the hill and it was all light and contrast.  This next one had the name “Racy Lady”:

In the shadow of the large trees however the light was still very subdued.  I liked the delicate colour in this next rose, “Wise Woman”:

Must be hard to come up with their names.  Here is “Amber Flush”:

Now one that I’m sure my mother would like, “Lemon Honey”:

The strong backlighting made for some dramatic images:

Finally I came across one called “Tintinara”.  For some reason the deep red roses seemed to have more dew on them.  Maybe it was just more visible.  I had quite a play with these, before a breeze came up and made closeup photography almost impossible.

For the photographers: all of these were taken with the Nikon 300mm f4 AFS (the lens I was lucky to recover after leaving it behind on a beach – see that story here).  Without extension tubes the subject distance is around 3 m, while with a 36mm tube (used for the last two), the subject distance is still a whopping 1.6 m.  The images are not cropped very much at all.