Consider the Water Lily

My dear husband was kind enough to share his water lily "location" with me. We went out this morning before it got too beastly hot and shot off several. It is one of those places that you could spend all day shooting, but not on a 98 degree day! This was one of my favorites...

Very pretty capture Karla. I like the lighting, you must have been up pretty early?

Lovely blooms in a lovely shot. Reflections from the leaves seem a bit harsh, while the Lotus petals seem a bit soft. Did you use flash-fill on these?

Just curious: Are these Toad-Suck Lotus Blossoms?

We did get there shortly after sunrise. But, they don't open till they've had some morning light for 30 minutes or more. Some of them didn't open until 8:00am. I'm not sure what time they close later in the day, but we had tried to get a sunset with them the week before and they had already closed up for the night.

We found a great location that has a wooden fishing pier overtop of a large group of lilies that should bloom out next week. It will give us a chance to get closer to the blooms and maybe concentrate on dragonflies landing on the blooms. We'll post 'em as we get 'em.

Daniel...No flash...Shot in raw...Not really any significant work done on this. I pulled the highlights ever so slightly to get more detail on the petals. The shadows are "as is", just created from the early morning sun....

Looks pretty good to me. But I do think toning down the leaf reflections would improve this image overall. Good luck getting some dragonflies to cooperate!

This is pretty nice Karla. I have the best luck shooting waterlilies when the sky is brightly overcast. Still bright enough that the blooms are open but the diffuse light of the overcast sky reduces the harsh shadows.

This is a nice grouping and I like the added red color of the upturned pads. Nice job Karla.

Thanks for all the comments. I agree that the shadows are a bit harsh, but toning down seemed to make it muddy to me. In a perfect world I would have perfect conditions to shoot in all the time, but alas, my shooting time is funneled down to a Saturday and Sunday and occasionally stealing some time from the week in the evening or early morning. Just so happens no diffused overcast sky for the liking this past Saturday...Oh well, at least I had a chance to shoot

Karla, nice catch, it looks like you caught them just as they opened early in the morning. I have a few of these in the pond in my backyard and have gone out to photograph them late in the evening and they are closed up! They must like the sun.

Really nice composition. You found a healthy cluster. Seems like when I shoot these, I always get a raggedy one in the frame! My only suggestion is to tone down the highlights on the leaves just a bit. Good luck catching dragonflies! I always have a lot of fun shooting dragonflies on lillies.