Favorite Flower #1: The Dahlia

 

I've been photographing flowers since I bought my DSLR camera in 2012.  I learned how to properly photograph them when I attended a flower photography workshop at a local garden store in the spring of 2013.  I didn't have a favorite then, even though I think I took more photos of daisies than anything else.  But when I attended a Dahlia show at Madison's Olbrich Botanical Garden, I fell in love with them.  I loved the curves, the two-toned colors and the many different types I found.

 

Did you know that there are 42 different species of Dahlias?  They are native to Mexico, related to daisies, sunflowers, chrysanthemums and zinnias (all flowers I'm also drawn to), and are classified into 14 different groups based on their design.  For example, the dahlia above is part of the Pompon group.

 

There is also the Peony group:

 



 The Semi-Cactus group:

The Anemone group:

The Single-Flowered group: 



The Collerette group:

And the Fimbriated group:

 

There are also waterlily, "decorative", ball, cactus, star, double, and "miscellaneous" dahlias.

As you can see, there are so many different types of dahlias, that it's easy to mistake them for another type of flower.  They consider dahlias to be "octoploids", meaning they have 8 sets of chromosomes whereas other flowers only have two.  This is why there are so many different types.

The next time you go to a botanical garden, public park or flower shop, you just might find one of these beautiful, vibrant flowers (and not even know it).

Behind Home Plate & Beyond: Free Day at Miller Park

Yesterday, I wrote about the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, a great organization that sponsors "Gifts to the Community", with free access to area places and attractions one day each month in 2015 to celebrate their 100 years of service.  One of the gifts mentioned was a free behind-the-scenes visit to Miller Park, home of the Brewers baseball team.  I was fortunate to attend this event in September and got some really cool shots of the stadium that a lot of fans don't get to see when they're at the games.

I spent a lot of time down by the field where we visitors has (restricted) access.  Although the Brewers were playing in Pittsburgh that day, the grounds crew still had to do their work, so we couldn't go onto the field itself.  However, we did get to see the visitors' dugout, and I spent much of my time practicing my architecture photography skills on the stadium's massive arches.

This photo was my favorite one of the day:

 

In addition to the field, we got to see many of the stadium's other features like the warm-up pitching area, complete with the phones to the manager and home dugout:

The visitors' locker room:

The reporters' room, which sits behind home plate, and apparently, gets hit with a lot of foul balls through the open windows.  Some of the batters are nice enough to autograph the damage they've done.

And we also got to glimpse Bob Uecker's announcing booth.  Uecker is the voice of the Brewers and played with the team starting in 1961.  You may also remember him as the announcer in the film "Major League", which was shot at our former baseball park, County Stadium.

I've only been to a few games at Miller Park, but still never noticed the nice statues they have around the stadium.  Two statues are of Brewer Legends Robin Yount and Hank Aaron (who started as a Milwaukee Brave) and one is of Bob Uecker.

The most poignant statue that lies a bit farther away from the stadium is of three construction workers.  On July 14, 1999, three men working on the construction of Miller Park were killed when a crane dubbed "Big Blue" collapsed.  This statue lies in tribute to those workers.  For more information on the tragedy, click here.

It was a fun and fascinating day to be at Miller Park on that September day and a fantastic end to an incredible summer in Southeastern Wisconsin.  I will be posting more about my other summer adventures soon.

Summer Flowers, Revisited

We may be in the early part of autumn, but I for one am not ready to say goodbye to summer yet.  I took these photos at Milwaukee's Boerner Botanical Gardens this past summer, and at least I know I can look at them later this year as the snow falls to remind me another two seasons of flower-viewing are ahead. 

I hope you enjoy the photos in this post, which is also my "S" entry for Alphabe-Thursday.  For more entries, click here.

Wordless Wednesday: End of Summer

Today, I'm participating in my first Wordless Wednesday.  This blog challenge is hosted by many different bloggers, and Claudia Willison, one such host, explains it well on her site, Images By CW:

“On Wednesdays all over the internet, bloggers post a photograph with no words to explain it on their blog. Hence the ‘wordless’ title. The idea is that the photo itself says so much that it does not need any description.”

Full Moon Fever

It seems like every time there has been a full moon in my part of Wisconsin lately, it has been cloudy or I haven't had my camera with me.  But tonight, I FINALLY had a chance to take a shot of this bi-monthly phenomenon.  Now, since my telephoto lens only goes up to 250 mms, the above shot was the best I could do.  I even used the "Unsharp Mask" a few times in Photoshop Elements to enhance the moon's craters and shadows.  But, I'm very excited to say I got a full moon shot.  I can't wait until fall when I can shoot the more exciting harvest moon.  It will be a lot cooler too - today's heat index was close to 100 and there is no relief in sight.  I did, however, see some rain this morning, so there is hope - someday.