Sunday, 9 March 2014

Seonaid's Assignment 2 - theme

After our class last week I was reading up about the Fibonacci series and the Golden Mean.  As a one time mathematician, numbers fascinates me.  So I then decided that perhaps I would somehow make that my theme.  For this week I wanted to try to find natural things around me which demonstrated the occurrence of Fibonacci numbers in nature, or the spiral derived from them.  In addition to the numbers I tried to use the rule of thirds, or the golden mean, wherever it made sense. 




I started with this fern with its spiral and last week's shell, the other way up


These muscari flowerlets are arranged in a similar pattern to the pineapple or a cone demonstrating the sequence



The petals of this delicate Ranunculus sping from a tight spiral.


The veins in the wings of this bee and the fly branch in accordance with the Fibonacci series and I feel sure that must apply to this euphorbia.


The Fibonacci numbers start as 1,1,2,3,5,8,........

This cactus therefore represents the number 8 in the series






This Helebore represents the number 5, By placing it in the square to the left of the photograph, my idea was to use the golden mean.






These Bergenia flowers have three real petals and three outer ones so this represents the number three.



The crocus has three stigmas and three anthers although these cannot clearly be seen here




 I have included this mahonia because the evening sun lit it up - also emphasising the lovely fragrance.




 I cannot resist taking photographs of the flowers in my garden!  It turned out that I was doing just that, but thinking about it differently.  

6 comments:

  1. I find the framing of the crocus really pleasing, it looks so warm and enticing. I like the soft focus on the petals that still allows the lines to show , although I would have liked the orange bits to be more focussed and these have lost definition because of blown channels (I get that a lot on reds with my Canon so I underexpose slightly to keep the fidelity)

    The Ranunculus is a great fit for your theme.

    Your passion for your garden is really clearly communicated in these images.

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  2. Thanks Rich. You'll have to explain about blown channels tomorrow. That sounds quite technical.

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  3. You have given me a different perspective on plants and really interesting. The colours are great! The first photo is really interesting and takes my imagination to another world. As does the cactus, it look like it is alive (not in a plant sence but animal).

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  4. This is what I meant about blown channels. It's like blown highlights when you hit the maximum bright white, but it occurs on highly saturated colours, too when one or two channels (red, blue or green) hits its maximum. Below is a tweet from me a while back when I realised how much detail my camera's built-in JPEG was losing:

    https://twitter.com/twentyoseven/status/232604748577140736

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  5. Hey, ignore the bit about the focus on the orange bits - I think that was my blurry eyes not your photos! Have just looked at it big and the focus is great! Sorry about that.

    The fern is amazing. You've captured the hairy edges beautifully and the v neutral background makes the colours really pop out.

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  6. The composition on the cactus is very pleasing, I like the way that the lines all stem out from the centre and your eyes follow them

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