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When I woke up this morning (sounds like an introduction to a blues song) and pulled my curtains back, I couldn’t help but notice the dark, overcast sky. I love overcast skies; my theory as to why I do relates to my time living in South-East Asia and how an overcast sky there lowers the tropical temperature and sun glare substantially. Or perhaps my judgement has always been clouded over. Oh come on, that was a quality joke.
Anyway there is definitely something mystical and mysterious about overcast days. There’s something about a thick, white and grey wooly blanket covering the sky and affecting how we see everything around us that is something special. Given Adelaide is the driest state capital city in Australia we get very little rainfall, so an overcast day here is a big deal.
Rather than sit locked up at home programming or working on a new blog post, I decided at 07:14am to venture outside with my trusty FujiFilm S9600 bridge camera and take some photos. To my surprise and delight it’s spring, I had completely forgotten. What was supposed to be a photographic expedition to take pictures of the sky with the Mawson Lakes park in the foreground turned into a trip to take photos of wildflowers.
Just as I harbour a love for Glenn Miller, the Rat Pack, Jazz, Big Band and folk music in contrast to a darker, lesser known obsession with 1980s era soft, psychedelic electronica that I try my best to conceal; I’m as equally contrasty (I’m pretty sure that’s not a word) when it comes to plants and gardening. I am a huge fan of Japanese gardens with their clean lines and minimalistic zen approach, but I also love colourful wildflowers which grow with little regard to homosapien gardening rules. Some people even go so far as to consider them weeds. I don’t care, they’re pretty.
I took over 300 photos this morning, the best two dozen or so I uploaded onto my Flickr profile under an aptly-titled set called Mawson Lakes Spring Wildflowers if you want to check them out; a select few are shown below. I used manual focus for most of the shots so I could feel as though I was doing more of the work than the camera, so therefore if the shot came out great it was because of me and not an auto focus! Not only that, but the auto focus on the S9600 really has trouble with macro settings.
Enjoy, and if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, a belated welcome to Spring :-).
