Posts Tagged tulips
April 29, 2011 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on April 29, 2011
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Friday, April 29, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2465
So, today’s post wraps up the month of April. Another month, come and gone. Man, I should have something poignant to say about that.
This is (I think, although I haven’t verified) the last weekend of this year’s Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. they bloomed late this year, so I’m sure it’ll be fantastic up there. (And, the tulips will probably last past this weekend, but I don’t know what the deal is after the festival officially ends.) I was up there earlier this month, right after they started blooming. As you can see, a lot of them hadn’t opened up all the way yet (and there were a lot of steps that were still totally green.) So, I think I’d recommend heading up there later in the bloom cycle (like, say, *now*) as opposed to hitting it at the beginning. But, take what you can get I guess. The weather’s looking good this weekend though, so if you haven’t made it out there yet, just freakin’ go!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/500s, f/7.1, ISO 200. Focal length: 250mm.
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April 18, 2011 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on April 18, 2011
2011 Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Monday, April 18, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2459
Hey everyone! It’s tulip time here in the northwest, so in a rare break from my usual behavior, I’m actually going to post a picture here to the blog that was actually taken in the last 24 hours. Crazy, right? Totally.
So, as you’ve probably guessed by the title of the post, this was taken at the 2011 Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I can’t tell you exactly where I was at the time, because I was just walking around some random field of tulips that was off the side of the road. But it’s tough to go wrong once you get up there – just find some flowers and go look at them.
Sadly, this was about the only good picture I got this year. I’m not sure why, but I have a few theories. First, I just wasn’t really in that much of a picture-taking mood this year. So, I snapped a few, but my heart just wasn’t in it. Then of course there was the problem of this freaking annoying cloud that was just hovering right there between me and the sun for most of the time I was there. It wasn’t blowing by like most clouds should, it kept billowing around and reforming right where it was the most inconvenient. So about two thirds of the time I was there the light stunk. Probably the biggest problem was that I didn’t really think through ahead of time what kinds of shots I would want to try to get. I did that last year, and correspondingly I got a lot of shots I was happy with. This year, I of course fell back on some of the same ideas I used last year, but since I already got them last year, I didn’t really try at all this year, and thus the ones I did get were junk. So, umm, whoops.
I still totally recommend that you go check it out yourself – especially if you’re a photographer. As I’ve mentioned in the past, there are TONS of great themes you can play around with. But, it’s definitely worth the time to do some planning. I realize that may be tough if you’ve never been there before and don’t know how things are laid out, but it’s still worth doing. Just sort of make a mental checklist of things you want to play around with, different ways of putting all the elements together. Some of the primary themes are of course the expansive fields of color, all made up by mostly-repeating (but all subtly different) patterns and flower-shapes, the orderly rows of flower beds, the contrasts between plots of different types of tulips, and of course the external elements (like barns, mountains, trees, and clouds). But beyond that, there’s lots of things you can do, lots of different lines and colors and elements to work with. It’s can be a great time.
Unless you’re lazy, like I was this year. Then it’s just meh. But, do go check it out. And plan on traffic being a bit annoying. And plan on paying 5 bucks to park each time you stop. Plan on hitting a few different fields, to get different combinations of colors. And, definitely plan on seeing plenty of people, and having to be creative to keep them out of your pictures. If you go into the experience planning for those things, you’ll have a much better time when you’re there. (Oh, and head north to Highway 20 on the way out, otherwise you’ll be hating your life.)
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/2000s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 194mm.
Popularity: 17%
February 23, 2011 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on February 23, 2011
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1467
Hey everybody! It’s been awhile since I’ve put anything up here (I’ve been busy!), so here’s a quick shot of some flowers to tide you over.
These are from the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival near Mt. Vernon, in Washington State. It’ll be coming up in here in a month or two, so, umm, dot dot dot.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/400s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 300mm.
Popularity: 27%
August 20, 2010 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on August 20, 2010
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Friday, August 20, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1466
Oh man, I was so excited this week to pick out a mediocre image for mediocre image Thursday. But I missed it! I totally missed my chance! Dang! I mean, that’s not to say that Thursdays are any different from any other day of the week. But, it’s always nice to get a chance to explicitly call out mediocrity when you see it. You know, get rid of all the pretense and such. It’s liberating!
Today, we’re back to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I think this one is from this year, but I can never keep that straight. I, uhh… don’t really have a whole lot else to say today. Since it’s already late. See you all on Monday!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/640s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length: 271mm.
Popularity: 20%
July 2, 2010 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 2, 2010
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Friday, July 2, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1470
Umm, is anybody actually there? I figure by waiting until late in the afternoon on the Friday before a holiday weekend, I’ve already lost my entire U.S. audience. Well, whatever, they don’t know what they’re missing. Me and the rest of you guys can do without them.
Here’s another picture from this year’s Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I found myself playing around with the boundary between tulips of two different colors. Some shots came out pretty well, others, not so much. I found that, in general, I was happiest with those where the very last row of the tulips of the color in front were in focus. I definitely played around with other focus points, and some of them definitely worked out okay, but “in general” (with big air-quotes), this is what tended to work the best. (Other things I tried were: focusing somewhere near the middle of the color in the foreground, focusing at the extreme front, and focusing on the closer flowers in the color that was further away – similar to the idea of focusing on the back of the front color, but definitely different.)
For this picture in particular, I was using my really old Quantaray telephoto lens. To review, that’s the first lens I ever bought to go with a digital camera. It’s passable, but it’s definitely not the best lens I’ve ever seen. But this all comes back to the idea that it’s really hard to find a “really good” telephoto lens that isn’t tremendously huge and doesn’t weigh several pounds. Obviously, there are those huge Canon lenses, the white-ish ones, that are all metal, and are a foot and a half long and like 6 inches in diameter. Those things are fantastic. But a) they’re not anything that resembles cheap, and 2) they’re HUGE, so the idea of taking them hiking is laughable. And recently I saw a reasonably-sized Canon lens that got decent reviews, but it was I think close to 1000 dollars, which is well more than I want to pay for a lens in that range. So this one isn’t that great, but any of the reasonably-priced, reasonably-sized alternatives aren’t quite enough of an improvement to justify the price. With the caveat that, I actually DID replace it recently, with the Canon 55-250, which also got what I’d call “reasonably” (I’m loving that word today) good reviews, and was in the realm of decently affordable. After using it for awhile, it’s.. fine. It’s not blowing me away, but it’s got image stabilization which is nice, so I guess it’ll do for now.
In other news, some random, totally awesome guy with fantastic taste put little old me in the list of his 5 favorite blogs. Neat!
Have a great holiday everyone. Or, if you’re not American, have a great Friday and Saturday, and at least a passable Sunday!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/800s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 248mm.
Popularity: 14%
April 16, 2010 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival (again)
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on April 16, 2010
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Friday, April 16, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1468
Normally I wouldn’t do it, but I decided this time around that it’s okay to post two pictures of basically the same thing (the tulip festival) in one week. I’m counting the number of times that I’ve almost changed my mind about doing this, and I’m already up to 3. But no, I’m going to stick to my guns. Because if I toss this one out, that means I have to go back to the pool to pick another one. Now I’m at 4.
I wanted to put another one here because I know a lot of people are thinking about heading up this weekend, and I want those people to be psyched. Personally, I’ll be skiing this weekend, so yesterday’s picture was for me. But this one is for you, dear tulip-loving reader. Although, I probably should have picked a picture containing different colored tulips than Monday’s picture (5). Oh well, too late now. Here’s hoping that you don’t have to fight too much traffic, and that the flowers are still blooming!
I have a whole set of pictures based on this same theme – that being showing two contrasting seas of color against each other. One thing I was trying to get, which I was only marginally successful at, was to have the focal point be right there at the dividing line. That wasn’t really a goal of this particular picture, but in general it was. (If you get it close but not right on, then it just looks wrong. But if put the focal point well away from the border, then it’s clear that you’re not trying to emphasize the actual dividing line, that instead you’re just trying to show how ridiculously endless the flowers are were. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself, and since this is a one-sided conversation, I win.)
Have fun up there! Hope the weather doesn’t suck! (I’ll admit, I have an ulterior motive on that one – I hate skiing in the rain.)
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/800s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 300mm.
Popularity: 16%
April 12, 2010 – 2010 Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on April 12, 2010
2010 Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Monday, April 12, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1461
So I actually followed my own advice this weekend, and I headed up to Mt. Vernon to check out the tulips. I hadn’t made it in a couple years, so I figured it would be a good chance to see what I could come up with now that I’m older, wiser, better equipped, and (dare I say it?) better at taking pictures than I was last time. That last part is of course up for debate, but what is NOT up for debate is that I definitely take MORE pictures at a time now, so the odds are totally in my favor. I think I got some great ones, but I haven’t had a chance to really dig through and see what I’ve got yet. I wanted to post one today, since it’s, you know, topical, so I started at the very beginning and looked through them until I found one I wanted to post. This was the 6th picture I took on Saturday, and it’s good enough. I could have gone with, say, number 4, but I figured a picture of the car all loaded up and ready to go wouldn’t be as exciting.
Everybody keeps saying that the tulips were early this year, due to our somewhat warmer than normal winter (El Nino). Normally, the festival basically goes from the beginning of April to the end of April, but I think things started blooming a couple weeks early this time around. So, if you’re still hoping to hit it up, I think you’d be okay next weekend, but it’d be questionable for the weekend after. There were only really a couple fields when I was there though, most of the area was either all plowed up or being used to grow other stuff. I’m not sure what that means as far as your tulip opportunities, I’ll leave that one up to you. Traffic wasn’t too bad. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the place was mobbed, but it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Just be prepared to move slowly at times, bring some good tunes or something, it’ll be fine. I think it may actually be worse in the morning though. We got up there around 2pm or so, and I think a bunch of folks had already been there and gone home. Whatever, now I’m just rambling.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50 mm f/2.8 lens. 1/2500s, f/3.5, ISO 100. Focal length: 50mm.
Popularity: 10%
March 22, 2010 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on March 22, 2010
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Monday, March 22, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=901
So it’s full-on spring now in most places, which is always bittersweet for me. Spring is pretty and all that, but it means the end of winter. And, more importantly, the end of ski season. This season in particular is a bit rough on me, because I’m missing a good chunk of the end of the season being out of town. (I missed all this last weekend, and I’m about to leave for two weeks! Aaahhh!) That being said though, spring means flowers, and flowers are things that you can take pictures of.
Today’s picture comes from the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, which takes place every spring (usually throughout April) in the Skagit Valley, which is about an hour north of Seattle (around Mt. Vernon). I think this one was from a couple years ago, since I was unable to make it last year for one reason or another. I’m really hoping to make it again this year, but we’ll see how the schedule works out. If you have a chance, you should definitely check it out. It can be intimidating just because of the sheer number of people that head up there (parking and driving around can be a real pain) but it’s a great chance to try out some crazy picture ideas, to play around a bit.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/400s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 27%
June 29, 2009 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on June 29, 2009
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, La Connor, Washington
Monday, June 29, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=893
Before I talk about today’s picture, there’s something I wanted to tell all of you:
I worked hard over the weekend to get the new “official” home of my Picture of the Day all caught up and ready for general consumption. It’s at http://davefry.net/potd . Go check it out. For the forseeable future I’m going to be cross-posting in both places, so if reading the entries here works for you, no need to change. But Facebook tweaks the pictures when I upload them, it resizes them smaller and at a lower quality level, so they get a bit blurry and chunky. Not a huge deal unless you look really closely (which I do), but I find it annoying. So the pictures on davefry.net, while still shrunk from original full size, are definitely higher quality than you’ll see here on FB. Okay, enough about that, now on to today’s entry…
This is another picture from the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival near La Connor. Julie and I actually didn’t make it up there this year, so this is another picture from last year. There’s a few I want to post eventually from there/then, so I figure I should space them out because that’s what the rules say I need to do. You know, the rules.
The field we were hanging out in had pinks, reds, and some dark purple/maroons. Sadly, I totally failed in all of my attempts at getting good pictures involving the dark purples, because they totally tripped up the light meter, they just wouldn’t turn out right. But the reds and especially the pinks made for great shots.
With huge fields full of nearly identical brightly-colored flowers like these, there’s lots of different themes you can play around with. Depending on your vantage point, you can emphasize the endless fields of color, you can go after the repetitive patterns of the rows, you can focus on the detail of one or two flowers in particular, you can play the detail off against all of the above, etc, etc, etc. Lots of fun stuff. One of the biggest challenges is trying to get pictures without getting any of the hundreds of other people walking around in the frame. Which is a lot harder than it sounds. Also, one of my pet peeves is an otherwise really beautiful scene that gets rudely pulled back to reality by the presense of, say, an ordinary car, or a stupidly dressed person, that kind of thing. I tend to really dislike “ordinary” things getting into my pictures, because I guess I try to make my pictures as escapist as possible, if that even makes any sense.
I think tomorrow I’m going to post another lightning picture, because several weeks ago I said I was going to, but then I never did. So now you have something to look forward to.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens. 1/200s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 154mm.
Popularity: 8%
May 22, 2009 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on May 22, 2009
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Friday, May 22, 2009.
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=889
This was taken up near La Connor, Washington, during the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. There’s a bunch of tulip farms up there, so every April, there’s a ton of tulip fields to go check out. It’s kind of a trip, seeing whole fields of these really bright, bold colors. Each time you go, there are different varieties blooming, and thus totally different colors. This time around, we ended up in a tulip field with these pinks, some deep reds, and some purples. Since it’s the Seattle area in April, the weather of course can be hit or miss, but if you hit it on a nice day, it can be a lot of fun.
Because of the holiday weekend, this is going to be the last post until Tuesday. I haven’t decided for sure yet what my general policy will be on weekends. I’m leaning towards only putting up pics on weekdays, but if you have an opinion either way, let me know. Or don’t. Whatever. 
Map: http://tinyurl.com/o3tmax
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens. 1/400s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 200mm.
Popularity: 8%