Hie to Brookside Gardens!

The last couple of days I've been going to Brookside Gardens,

1800 Glenallan Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20902

for it is the time of year in which one can see a gorgeous spring flowering. Impressive, and this spring does not disappoint. I'll post some pictures when I get the time.

Meanwhile, I've noticed that my camera has focusing problems and is getting to be pretty useless for closeups; a close-up of a flower, say, either in auto or manual focus will end up with the focus either in front or behind the flower, but never spot-on. I say "in front of or behind" because I am fiddling with the micro lens adjustment contained in the camera's circuitry and I think I am getting there.

Frustration got the better of me a couple of times and so I decided to try something quite different - something I learned in one of Freeman Patterson's books "Photography and the Art of Seeing". Set the camera at a slow speed - between 1 and 4 seconds, for instance, and, hand-holding, slowly pan left to right, or up and down, or diagonally. You have to shoot several frames before you can get something worthwhile. I did this on a number of tulip beds. The results are appended below. Rather like them.

Anyway this is really a blog entry to let everyone know to go to Brookside gardens, if you can. Go early, for by 9.00 to 10.00 the park is getting to be full of people. (One may expect the place to be swamped this weekend.) I've been getting there at 6.30 am; I park at the Nature Center which is a little short of the Gardens parking lot, approaching along Glenallan Ave., from Kemp Mill Road. I've attached a small map below. You can enter by a small gate. And if you want to photograph wild-flowers then there are lots of woods and walks around the Gardens that you may wander in.

Next week, I suspect, you will find lots of photographers there because the wisteria are beginning to bloom, and the display at Brookside has to be seen. I append one picture, taken from a distance of the wisteria, blooming on trellises, in front of a background of myrtles.  Best, Farid.