Nasty - 09A_3445_nasturtium2.jpg
 

Actually, something I didn't know before is that these plants are not
really botanical nasturtium. I guess it is like "geranium" and
"pelargonum" where an actual botanical name has been commonly
misapplied to a completely different genus. Anyway, for the record,
these are apparently called tropaeolum by the botanists. The actual
nasturtium genus is the home of the edible watercress.

I like nasturtium because of their tolerance to hot, dry weather and
their exceptionally long bloom time. These will now be in flower until
our first serious frost, probably in late October or November. The
flowers are famously edible too, if you need a quick snack while
weeding.

I am creating a new flower bed on a slope by our driveway visible from
the road, and I want it to feature fancy hybrid daylily. I bought a
bunch them this year, but it will be a few years before they fill in
and look good, so I also put in a quarter-pound of nasturtium seed to
hold things over for this year. This is a variety called "Whirlybird"
from Stokes Seeds, whose claim-to-fame is that the flowers face upward
rather than hang looking at the ground as they often do.

Intense reds like this are often hard to take pictures of because they
tend to overexpose. This was spot-metered on the flower and also used
a -1Ev override to compensate for this. This was also shot late in
the day and the effect of the long evening sun made the background
foliage too yellow, so I also adjusted the color temperature to
compensate for that. The light is still rather warm, but more natural
looking that it was.

Canon 1DmkIII; EF24-105 f4L IS; 105mm ISO-200; f5.6; 1/640-sec
e-mail: blissful-wind(at)usa.net

Additional images at;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/john-pa/