Pride of Madeira and Monkey Flower are in full bloom on the edges of the San Francisco Bay. I took this “intimate” shot at Fort Baker on a brief stop today during my commute home.
Lens: Canon EF-S 15-85mm at 78mm. 1/60 second at f/5.6, ISO 100.
Canon T2i enjoying the season.
I’ve been seeing patches of these blue flower spikes for years but never bothered to find out what they are. The solution? Take a photo! For several weeks, I’ve been eyeing this patch near where I run during my lunch breaks. The blooms burst this weekend, so today I stopped and grabbed a few quick shots with the G11. The large perennial is called “Pride of Madeira“. They are quite stunning, even under a bright, overcast sky in the early afternoon. I gave the image a bit of a faux HDR effect by converting a Photoshop layer to black and white with Nik Silver Efex Pro (version 1). During the conversion, I boosted the “Structure” 30%, “Contrast” 9%, and took the “Brightness” down to -5%. Happy with the black and white layer, I then duplicated the original layer, moved it above the Niks layer, switched it from “Normal” to “Color” in the layers menu at 100% and merged down.
Canon G11 filling in the gaps.