Landscaping with grasses

Ornamental grasses can add a great deal to a garden landscape. Here the graceful curves of the grass contrast with the strong lines of the pedestrian bridge across a pond. (Children's Garden, Dow Gardens, Midland, Michigan)

Love the tall wild grasses (except pampas grass).
Great banner, Elizabeth.

Very pretty composition! It makes a great banner, Elizabeth.

Here's the uncropped original photo of the scene.



It was taken in early October, so most of the plant interest in the garden by that time was from various foliage plants.

Cool banner Elizabeth!

It's refreshing when another facet of gardening is brought about. This is well captured, just right for the banner symmetry and artistically inspiring, as is your work on https://arctangent.smugmug.com I highly recommend it.

Elizabeth, Great picture and banner! Ornamental grasses are often tough plants with a long season of interest, yet they are underutilized. I love to see them in landscapes. Thanks for promoting them!

Fleur, the link didn't work for me...

Try this... https://arctangent.smugmug.com...

Great photography & website, Elizabeth!

What area of science were/are you in?

It's never easy to take such a lovely picture and crop it for a banner. The banner is good; the larger picture is magnificent.

Thank you, Cal. That worked! Much to explore here, Elizabeth---I'm looking forward to it as I have the chance!

Elizabeth, I saw you were here (in Croatia) 9 years ago. Nice.

Responding to a question and several comments in one reply.

@EscondidoCal asked about my area of science. I'm a retired university professor. My area was physical chemistry.

@Lucius93 remarked that I had visited his home country of Croatia (from seeing photos of it on my smugmug site, I surmise). I loved it, have fond memories of that part of my trip, and highly recommend it to anyone contemplating visiting that part of the world, once the horrors of the global pandemic subside.

I appreciate, too, the shout outs about my smugmug site, with @Fleur569 and @EscondidoCal sharing the link. I wasn't sure anyone had even noticed the comment about it that appears at the bottom of my posts. It's not that I'm trying to promote it. I don't profit from it. I just enjoy sharing my photographic efforts with others.

Thanks to all of you for your kind words about this banner. I'm a huge fan of public gardens, and have missed being able to enjoy them in the usual way this past year, so I've appreciated even more the photos others share of their own gardens on this site.

- Elizabeth

Elizabeth, The banner is wonderful, the grasses and bridge draw me in. BUT, you sent me down the rabbit hole on your website! Oh my gosh! Trying to pick a favorite was impossible. My favorite section was the Art in Nature section, those are the type of photos that I try to take. I love the textures of natural substances. I'm also in love with your filtered photos that look like impressionist paintings, gorgeous! On the photo with the leaf floating that won the prize, I don't know enough about how light plays in photos to know why it did, just that it is a wonderful picture, but my favorite part is that I can see the meniscus of the water on the waxy leaf cuticle, so cool!

Your banner, original photo and smugmug website are outstanding.

MargieNY

mmolyson said:Elizabeth, The banner is wonderful, the grasses and bridge draw me in. BUT, you sent me down the rabbit hole on your website! Oh my gosh! Trying to pick a favorite was impossible. My favorite section was the Art in Nature section, those are the type of photos that I try to take. I love the textures of natural substances. I'm also in love with your filtered photos that look like impressionist paintings, gorgeous! On the photo with the leaf floating that won the prize, I don't know enough about how light plays in photos to know why it did, just that it is a wonderful picture, but my favorite part is that I can see the meniscus of the water on the waxy leaf cuticle, so cool!

Me, too! I'll have to look for the floating leaf.
I love the photos of reflections (a personal favorite subject) on the river from the bridge over the Huron, and bubbles at the shore, and on the water reflecting the red Japanese maples.

I loved browsing your site! I've bookmarked it for when I have more time. Your photography is wonderful! I especially love the travel photos from abroad.

EscondidoCal said:
Me, too! I'll have to look for the floating leaf.
I love the photos of reflections (a personal favorite subject) on the river from the bridge over the Huron, and bubbles at the shore, and on the water reflecting the red Japanese maples.

It is called, "Floating Among Rainbows."
Enjoy!

Moggs, @mmolyson, had commented on a photo on my smugmug site (later identified as 'Floating Among Rainbows'), expressing a lack of understanding of how the light did what it did in that photo (https://arctangent.smugmug.com...). If the question is where the 'rainbows' came from, I can offer a crude pseudo-technical explanation for the general phenomenon. I don't guarantee it's the right one. You've probably all seen how sunlight on ripples in shallow water can cast bright lines on the solid surface beneath the water. That's caused by the curved ripples acting like crude lenses to concentrate the light. It's based on the ability of water to bend or refract light. That same property, refraction, disperses white light into colors, as in a prism, by bending each color by a different amount. Occasionally, when the angles between the sun and the ripples and the viewer are just right, you can see that color dispersion focused in spots or stripes, as happened with the referenced photo. The leaf (a katsura leaf, if you're interested) was floating near one corner of the Lurie Fountain and Reflecting Pool on the North Campus of UM, so I could move back and forth to maximize the color intensity I was seeing, but in a dynamic scene of moving water, it really was a crap shoot trying to capture it at its maximum.

Thanks, Moggs, for reminding me of that photo. Seeing it again took me back to that day, that moment, the joy of that experience.

EscondidoCal said:
Me, too! I'll have to look for the floating leaf.
I love the photos of reflections (a personal favorite subject) on the river from the bridge over the Huron, and bubbles at the shore, and on the water reflecting the red Japanese maples.

Cal, I think you can tell from my photo site that I love them, too. It's almost an obsession. In fact, I love photographing anything that has to do with any physical state of water, and its interaction with light and with other materials. Thank you so much for taking the time to visit the site and then tell me what found that you enjoyed. It made my day.