Yellow Poppies in the Conservatory

Another day with the Helios lens. I was getting excited that it might prove sharp. I was wrong. Absolutely no good outside but it does quite well with flowers.

We have lots of yellow poppies and I wanted to capture them as a posy. The blue Centauri make a complementary contrast.

I took this photo at midday with sun streaming into the conservatory. The window behind with a backdrop stuck to it provided the shadow. Accepted wisdom is NOT to take flower photos at midday. In this case, I really liked the contrast between light and shadow in the flowers.

Late this afternoon, I changed location to the north facing window in the dining area. Nowhere near as exciting and by then, at least three of the poppies had wilted. I removed them. See extra. Which also features a goniatite fossil from Saudi Arabia.

Basil and I circled Nanpantan Reservoir twice this afternoon. He's just gone out again with Len. He must be feeling exhausted.

Daddy grebe on the nest. I think it will be most of June before the eggs hatch and I hope there isn't a rain storm that will sweep the nest away, as has happened so often in the past.

Gareth is back. He is very troubled by all the violence in America at the  moment and gave us quite a lecture on being open to perceptions of bias.

Then we began singing. This week, we are looking at We Shall Overcome, which he has arranged for four parts. The words are simple but I still couldn't remember all of them.