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Plants give life
May be an empty saying, but photographing always means that you are
making a photo of something. Then it is questionable if the
photo itself or the object is the most important thing. The best would
be a wonderful photograph of a wonderful object. We are not talking
about snapshots, right?
When I started to travel to
Spain to the Costa Blanca my first digital camera was the Olympus C2500L
with 2.5MP and a resolution of 1712 x 1368 px. The results are not
as good as the present digital SLR's, like the Nikon D5200 which I use
since 2013. Now I have also the very good Panasonic G9 and the
Sony A6300. Progress for you...!!And of course we can see this, though some pictures are not
bad at all! In this case mostly the object, the plant, is in question. I
still have to scan many slides of wildflowers of the Canadian Rocky
Mountains. But I know, that we have to deal with a quality loss of, at a
rough estimate, 25 % of the picture. I used for many years, also in
Canada, the analog camera Olympus IS 1000 with good results. But
nevertheless with loss of quality with scans.
Nature or
architecture, wildflowers or church interiors, I all love it to
photograph. Ruins of convents and churches are a fine item too. When I
scan slides of flowers or churches, I remember again the beauty of
the photographic reality again. A visual souvenir. Yes, that's the
right expression. Even the smallest orchids I remember where they grew
and where I photographed them. Well enough of this romantic nonsense.......
One of the most
enjoyable things to do for me, is to stroll through the mountains and
woods to photograph wildflowers at many places. As you see the Costa
Blanca in Spain, but also the Canary Island La Palma, the Algarve in
Portugal, the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland and more recently the
beautiful but quite unknown state of Oregon in the USA. You can see the
results in many albums of the wildflowers there. And the Dolomites in
northern Italy to come as well as a trip to Austria. I call it sometimes
"God's showroom", and that's the way I see it!!
And the Canary Island
Tenerife - many beautiful wildflowers! Especially the Echium
wildpretii!!!
April 2011 we were 2 weeks on Crete. What an interesting wildflowers,
especially the wild orchids. See right below!!
May-June 2013 we were in the southwest of the USA to visit the
National Parks. Also many fine wildflowers to photograph. Enjoy my 7
albums, see below!!!
And September-october 2018 a safari trip of 3 weeks in
Namibia. So good. Even in a very dry jperiod there are some nice
wildflowers and trees.
Enjoy the pictures!
| NEW!!! Wildflowers of the
Costa Blanca in Spain: |
Since 1998 we visilted many times the Costa
Blanca in Spain. Mostly from January till the beginning of
April. We take a hotel in Benidorm, rent a car, and drive
through the inland and along te coast. Enjoying nice landscapes
and mountains till 1558 m high. And cities, villages of hardly
50 people (!) And photographing wildflowers that flower in this
time of late winder and early spring. On the left side you see 6
albums, that I made quite some years ago. Some names are not
corredt. But now I publish 34 albums with more than 800 (!!)
photos of these beautiful wildflowers. It took me some hundreds
of hours to do all the work of retouching the photos, search for
and named them, I hope with the correct names. See the book
review below!
More than once you will see photos of the same flowers again,
but I hope you will forgive me to do so. Repeating nice things
will not burden you, I expect.
The 34 albums show my love for plants, so also for wildflowers.
I have already an obsession for rhododendrons and azaleas - see
my website
www.rhodoland.nl, - yes, also in English - and you will
understand what I mean.
I could not find every flower's name. Sometimes it is very
difficult to distinquish one from others. If you disagree with
names, and you know better, please, let me know. Thanks in
advance!
Enjoy my albums!
Album 1303 Wilde flora Costa Blanca 1
1304-2
1305-3
1306-4
1307-5
1308-6
1309-7
1310-8
1311-9
1312-10
1313-11
1314-12
1315-13
1316-14
1317-15
1318-16
1319-17
1320-18
1321-19
1322-20
1323-21
1324-22
1325-23
1326-24
1327-25
1328-26
1329-27
1330-28
1331-29
1332-30
1333-31
1334-32
1335-33
1336-34
Books about wildflowers of the
Costa Blanca in Spain:
1."Kosmos-Atlas
Mittelmeer- und Kanarenflora" by Ingrid and Peter Schönfelder.
With more than 1600 (species of) wildflowers. German ISBN
3-440-06223-6;
2. "Field Guide to the wildflowers of the Western Mediterranean"
by Chris Thorogood; 630 pages with fine photos and good
descriptions ISBN 9781842466162 - published by the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew 2016.
3. "Wilde flora rond de Middellandse Zee" by Marjorie Blamey and
Christopher Grey-Wilson, Very good drawings; also English ISBN
90 6097 437 9;
4. "Plantas del Mediterráneo" Spanish book by Wolfgfang Lippert
and Dieter Podlech, moderate to good photos, ISBN 84-241-2666-1;
5. 300 Plantes de la Vall de Gallinera, Spanish, good pictures
ISBN: 978-84-695-4118-0;
6. "Pflanzen in ihren Lebensräumen an der Costa Blanca" by
Ferdinand Rüther, good descriptions and
photos, ISBN84-89111-16-2
7. "Common wildflowers of Spain" by Austen F. Colwell by Santana
Books. My advice: don't buy it, bad photos - most out of focus! |
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