Lily at the Pond

While at the Botanical Gardens with a friend Wednesday, we saw these lilies in a little pond or ditch. They are huge, and their seed pods reminded me of those that Ed shared with us to guess what it was. I was impressed with their height and size.

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Pertinent technical details or techniques:

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Canon 7D II, Canon 180 mm L macro lens on a monopod with gimbal head. Settings f5.6, 1/200, ISO 100.

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Shirley: A beautiful bloom in really nice condition. I do think this is a lotus which is characterized by the flathead center pod. If you look at my Mercer Magic you can see the difference in the centers. Petal clipping is a matter of taste. I tend to show the entire flower or clip enough to almost fill the frame with the subject. This does work for me, especially your DOF control and BG. :+1::+1:>=))>

Very nicely done Shirley, I like the pale yellow color of the petals, we don’t have any of that color where I live. The DOF and background look good, using selective focus on the seed pod does a great job calling attention to it. That seed pod head looks very similar to my “Guess what This Is” post.

@Bill_Fach question to the both of us about water lily vs. lotus got me curious, so I did a little research on this topic, and found this to be helpful.

Both water lilys and lotus flowers apparently have seed pod heads, but water lilys pods come out late in the season, my shot was from August, so that would be more consistent with lilys. But the best way to tell is the leaves, for lilys they float on the water, for lotus they rise on stalks above the water. Can’t tell from your background here.

Thank you, Bill and Ed. I do appreciate you taking the time to view and comment. Ed, it definitely was a Lotus. It was on a stalk way above the water. I should have looked it up myself, but being as unversed in flowers I had forgot about Lotus altogether, and just called it a Lily. Now I know. Always good to learn things. :slightly_smiling_face: