I have to thank Kieth Sprouse of Charlottesville, Virginia as well as many other photographers from around the world, for brow beating me until I fianally set my DSLR to RAW, it indeed changes your photography world! Doing so enables you to take some images that you want to toss in the delete pile and turn them into something wonderful, or atleast more useable than they otherwise would have been.
I have amazed myself, when I go to my Lightroom Catalog, and see just how many pictures I have taken, some I thought months back that I should mark them and just get rid of them, well that day has not come yet. It is a good thing, as today instead of working out in the beautiful sunshine like yesterday was, I did work on the balcony garden while getting rained on early this morning. Today is a dark and bleak rainy day. What to do, what to do, then I thought I would go through my Lightroom catalog and see what to pitch, well instead I started playing with images that I had forgotten all about and what flower could brighten up a dreary day more than Gladiolus can?
When we look at flowers along the roadside, in the field, or in formal gardens, we see flowers, bright and beautiful, they cheer you up if you are down, of course it means a little more if you were or are and avid gardener, botanist, or horticulturalist. Though when you are into photography it can open up a whole new world to you, through the use of Macro lenses, or extension tubes to be able to get closer than ever before. The inner working of the flower comes to life. I like close up and macro photography, it lets you into a world that the normal human eye cannot percieve. Colors, textures, veining, anthers, stamens, pistols, pollen (oh my even flowers have sex)!
When viewing flowers up close through the lense, at the time, you do not always percieve what you have just taken, it is not until you get it into Lightroom, on the computer, that you actually visually see the subtle nuances of the soft light back lighting petals, highlighting area you did not conceive at the time you clicked the shutter button. It depends on the flower and its texture, type of petal, as to what you get, with Gladiolus petals, the way the swirl out from the center and unfurl, often gives you an almost sensual feel, soft, yet some sharp in focus points acentuated by light and petals behind. You could refer to it as almost dreamy, etherial, sensual. Well a picture is truly worth a thousand words.
There are some pictures I have found that i did not like in color, delete! NOT so fast, you have the picture, try it in black and white, some photgraphs simply do not look like you remember the scene no matter what you do. Yet, some in black and white reveal an entirely new level of mystique and intrique to the imagination.
I like to experiment with flowers as everyone surely knows by now, I am enamered by the beauty deep within a flower, that we do not always see with the naked eye. We miss so much, of the intricate detail that shapes the bloosom from within. These things are small as the veins in the flower, leaves, stems and buds. The anthers, pistols and stamens. It is amazing what we see when we get closer in. 
