I belong to a large photography club in Albuquerque called the Enchanted Lens Camera Club. The club has several hundred people and has a lot of speakers, trips and other activities. One of the things the club does is encourage individual members to form smaller groups for the purpose of developing individual portfolios each year. The portfolio groups meet from the fall until the following spring. Members work on their individual portfolios with input and suggestions from the rest of their group. Portfolios are twelve or fewer images with an accompanying artist statement. At the end of the club year (usually in June) all of the individual groups get together and each participating photographer shows their portfolio to the entire club membership.

This year was the first time I participated in a portfolio group. The experience was a lot more fun than I originally thought it would be. I wanted to do a portfolio on something that would stretch my normal artistic range. I chose to do my portfolio on Ethereal Flowers. I have on occasion done high key and soft focus flowers but that is not my normal style. Usually I rely on full dynamic range and rich, saturated colors. For this portfolio I used a mix of older images that I completely reworked with different post processing techniques and new images taken specifically with the portfolio project in mind.

The images in the final portfolio is are shown below. I hope you enjoy them. I am already thinking about possible subjects for next year’s portfolio.

Cheers,

Mike

Silverleaf Nightshade

We live in the village of Placitas, New Mexico which is about twenty minutes north of Albuquerque. Our house is on the north side of the Sandia Mountains at 5,400 ft. in the upper Sonoran ecosystem. Although most people think of the desert as being sand dunes and cactus very few of the desert regions of the world are actually like that. The area we live in has lots of low Juniper, and Pinion trees along with many other desert plants including some cactus and yucca species and quite a few wildflowers.

Palmer Penstemon

Tulip Prickly Pear Cactus

Trumpet Gilia

Desert Willow

The development our house is in has a nice walking path along side the roads and in the springtime, if there is some rainfall, there are an amazing number of wildflowers that bloom here. I always like taking wildflower photos but this year with the COVID-19 stay-at-home order here in New Mexico I have spent a lot more time around the neighborhood and taking flower photos than in most years.

Broom Dalea

Red-whisker Clammyweed

Yellowspine Thistle

Devil’s Club Cactus

None of the flowers around here are particularly large. Certainly nothing like the Rhododenrons that we had in Seattle. The largest ones are some of the cactus flowers which can be several inches across. A lot of the photos I take of flowers here end up being pretty tight macro shots. I have a 150mm Sigma macro lens that I really love. It has a larger stand-off distance than the more common 90mm or 105mm macro lenses. That doesn’t make any particular difference with wildflower photos but it is really helpful when taking photos of butterflies, lizards ad the like. I use extension tubes on the lens a lot for the wildflowers around here to get enough magnification to fill the frame on the smaller ones.

Common Beehive Cactus

Wooly Prairie Clover

Threadleaf Groundsel

Tamarisk

Spider on James’ Holdback

Blanket Flower

Unfortunately the most of the wildflowers are fading now that the warmer and drier weather of June is here so I’ll have to find other things to take photos of.

Mike