Week 9: Pansies

Firstly I realised I mistakenly named my last weeks post week 9 - getting a bit ahead of myself there!

I have a pot of pansies in my front garden - the card called them halloween pansies, presumably because of the orange and purple bi-colour ones. But somehow I got a couple of lovely solid dark violet ones in there too. Pansies were developed from the viola species which are biennials, but have been selectively bred  to flower as soon as 9 weeks after the seeds are planted. They are winter hardy plants and survive frost and cold even during their flowering season which is why they are often used for colour in gardens during winter.

This photo is taken up close with the intention of using a shallow depth of field to separate out the single violet flower from the bi-colours in the back. It was taken by natural light on an overcast day (we have lots of them here in England :-) I tried using a reflector to give a bit of back lighting, but it didn't seem to work well and eventually I found that by turning the pot such that the direction of the light was from behind I was able to capture the "veins" and still have satisfactory lighting on the rest of the subject.