Walled Garden, The Moot, Downton

Disappointingly dull and overcast late yesterday evening, but the reds of these flowers sang out, crying to be photographed.

South Wiltshire's Downton 'The Moot' is a rather ramshackle, free to enter park, with landscaping loosely based on an Italianate setting, but very much a poor man's version but with a couple of nice areas.

I used a light grad grey filter on this in the shade shot on my Sigma Contemporary 17-70mm f2.8-4, which aside of being a very useful, quite fast (yet giving very good results) compact standard lens, it focuses down to .22 m (most standard zooms only get down to about .5 m, making it useful for getting objects close but at the wider end, (here 20mm) including the environment around it, which I often prefer to straightforward macro close up's. 

At 70mm, the macro ratio is .28 life size, but you can find that you're so close to the subject that removal of the lenshood is required to stop shadows and even brushing up against the rest of the plant/flower. 

At this setting, the quality is good rather than outstanding but fine for shots like this.