149/365: Fireworks

Well, boys and girls, it's been fun (some of the time) but my 365 project is coming to an end, well short of the finish line. Actually, it's already bit the dust, I'm just so far behind on posting that it isn't apparent. Today's photo, for example, I shot on July 4 with the intent of posting it July 5. Didn't get around to it until now, half a month later. And that's the rub--I've got a number of projects demanding my time and only so many hours in a day. Despite helping out The Wife, photography remains a hobby for me, and a much lesser priority than, say, writing and publishing books. I've never, ever been someone content with simply shooting a cell phone pic and Instagramming it to satisfy my 365 commitment. If I can't envision and execute a concept to my liking, I don't want to do it. I don't have the time to develop my vision into images I find acceptable. In light of that, I am re-allocating my resources elsewhere. There are still some backlogged photos, so they'll trickle out over the coming weeks. But we're going to fall significantly short of 200, much less 365. Just so you know.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Tamron 28-75mm 2.8
Lisa On Location

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148/365: Castle Falkenstein

Here's one of what appears to be quite a few 365 photos I took earlier this years but failed to post back when classwork got the better of me. I'd completely forgotten about some of these. This, for example, is Castle Falkenstein in the Texas Hill Country. It's supposedly based on plans designed by Mad King Ludwig but never built by the Bavarian monarch. Weddings are occasionally held there, but unfortunately, The Wife and I have never photographed one.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon FD 500mm f/8 reflex
Lisa On Location

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147/365: Lutea foliage

Last fall, the family and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Texas Renaissance Festival. Whilst there, amongst all the jousting and grogging and wenching, I discovered to my delight an extensive growth of passiflora lutea. Now lutea is a small, unassuming passion flower type with small, subtle yellow flowers that can easily be overlooked. This plant not only had a bunch of the little flowers in bloom, but was heavy with ripe fruit. Decaloba-type fruit are about the size of blueberries and generally inedible, but full of seeds. I collected several and after a few months of refrigeration for stratification of the seeds, I planted them. And I've been rewarded with a bunch of little lutea seedlings sprouting for me.

Lutea, as I mentioned, isn't a flashy passiflora species, but it is a Texas native, and I'm happy to add it to my collection.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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146/365: Tenuiloba foliage

Today I'm sharing the foliage of passiflora tenuiloba. This one's native to Texas, with a range starting in the Hill Country and extending west and south to more semi-arid regions. It doesn't have flashy flowers, being a small decaloba-type, but I find the foliage fascinating. It's informal name is "bird-winged passion flower," which is self-explanatory. I don't know of many other passiflora species with as elaborate a leaf form. One problem with this plant is that the stems are so thin that I haven't had any luck rooting cuttings from it, which frustrates me to no end, I assure you.

And here's a second view of some younger leaves. Note they start out with less pronounced lobes like other passis, but extend as the leaf grows and matures.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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145/365: Work-In-Progress

Not a terribly sexy photo for today's 365 installment, but it is a timely one. This is a glimpse of the current work-in-progress I've been hinting at (Chicken Ranch). Hopefully I'll have more substantive information to share next week.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Tamron 28-75mm 2.8
Lisa On Location

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144/365: Baby chameleon

Yes, I know they're technically green anoles, but I grew up calling them chameleons and still do to this day. Hard to argue with their color changes!

I first saw this little guy last week, hanging out in a potted plant on the front porch. He's a tiny hatchling, barely more than an inch long--I don't think I've ever seen one this small. He's wary, though, vanishing before I've been able to get my camera. Last night, however, I found him sleeping on a leaf, oblivious to my spying. I was able to get several shots before the confused guy woke up fully, then shut off all the lights and let him go back to sleep. Our bushes and thick passion vines around the house are a haven for the little lizards (there's an adult male displaying his red throat outside my window right now) and I like having them around. They remind me of my childhood, when I used to catch them for fun. It's amazing how large a moth these little guys can eat!

This bonus shot shows how sleepy he was. I've gotten this same exact look from The Wife some mornings...

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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143/365: Caerulea

And here we have a seed from quite possibly the most wide-spread passion flower in the world, caerulea. The seed's a bit smaller than that of incarnata, and not quite so dramatic in its surface texture. This is a seed from last year, stored in my refrigerator in a packet of moist sand. I suspect if I get some fresh seed this year I'll re-shoot it, as tiny sand grains wedged themselves into little nooks on the seed so that I couldn't brush it clean. Note to self: Fresh seeds photograph better than stored seeds.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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142/365: Incarnata seed II

I photographed the seed of passiflora incarnata earlier, for my film photography class, but I used a mottled gray background for that image and wasn't entirely happy with the contrast. So I've re-shot the species for consistency's sake. I like the contrast in this version much better.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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141/365: Inspiration seed

Inspiration is my next subject in my passiflora seed series, but it's not from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. This one is from my personal stock. Inspiration is a tetraploid hybrid, similar to the common p. Incense hybrid, but slightly larger with deeper violet flowers that reflex more. There are other subtle differences as well, along with one big one--Inspiration is self-fertile, whereas Incense fruits with reluctance. Seeds of Inspiration generally follow the classic, common passiflora seed form, but are significantly larger--half again to twice the size of a regular incarnata seed. It also has more red pigmentation than other seeds I've photographed, which is curious.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
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140/365: Herbertiana seed

Herbertiana is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Like p. aurantia, this is an Australian species, once of the few passiflora native to the "Old World." And like aurantia, herbertiana is among the smallest passiflora seeds I've worked with. It's slightly larger than aurantia, but not by much.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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139/365: Aurantia seed

Aurantia is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. This is an Australian species, once of the few passiflora native to the "Old World." A few years ago I bought some seed on Ebay, but they never germinated. Hopefully, I'll have more success with this one.

One other thing--these macro seed photos aren't to scale with one another. Their size varies widely, but I try to "fill the frame" as much as possible to reveal the maximum amount of detail. Aurantia is the smallest seed I've worked with yet--it's actually smaller than the head of a pin. I know, because I Photoshopped out the silver crescent of the pin head I'd mounted it to. Amazing something so small can grow into such impressive vines.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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138/365: Bogotensis seed

Bogotensis is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Again, I've never attempted to grow passiflora bogotensis before. It's a decaloba, which I like, and fairly rare, which I also like. However, it is reputed to dislike high temperatures, which means I'll have to keep it indoors throughout the summer lest it suffer the fate of the unfortunate tasconias I've attempted to grow. This might be the oddest seed form I've come across yet.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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137/365: Umbilicata seed

Umbilicata is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Again, I've never attempted to grow passiflora umbilicata before. This particular species has a more traditional appearance to its seeds, at least in comparison to the commonly cultivated species such as incarnata, eulis etc.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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136/365: Morifolia seed

Here's another subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Passiflora morifolia is another species I've never attempted growing before. I'm exceptionally accomplished at killing passiflora, but I'd much prefer developing my cultivation skills. Compare this seed with the previous image of the serratifolia seed and you can clearly see the dramatic morphological differences present.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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135/365: Serratifolia seed

So, I hang out online with a bunch of other passion flower enthusiasts who are members of the Passiflora Society International. The group recently had a seed sale, and I picked up several packages of seed from a variety of species. Naturally, before I planted them I decided to take some high-magnification macro photos of the seeds. Passiflora are known for their dramatic variation, and guess what? The same can be said for their seeds. This is the seed of passiflora serratifolia, a type I've never grown before. This seed has the most dramatic projectile-point shape I've ever seen, outside of an actual projectile point.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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134/365: Fruit press

So, The Wife got me a Ferrari fruit press for Christmas. Yes, I'm a little late acknowledging it, but it's an awesome fruit press, stainless steel and the perfect size for my needs. I didn't get to use it right away because of my ill-conceived foray back into collegiate coursework last semester, but once that was out of the way I broke it out in a big way. Last fall my moonglow pear tree produced a lot of sweet and flavorful pears, but most were too small to bother with eating. So I froze them to break down their cells and then sent them to the fruit press. Crushing and juicing four gallons worth of pears isn't terribly easy, but when you're single-minded obsessive like I can be, it is rewarding.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Tamron 28-75mm 2.8

And here's the result. Four gallons of whole pears isn't terribly juicy--I ultimately got half a gallon of juice. But that was enough to blend with some racked mead to make a kind of perry melomel. These pears aren't actual perry pears with high tannins, acid and tartness, but they do have good flavor so we'll see what develops. I didn't use a strainer bag when pressing them, so some particulates made it into the juice. Still, that's some pretty looking liquid, isn't it?

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Tamron 28-75mm 2.8
Lisa On Location

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133/365: Rind

sigh. At the rate I'm going, it'll take me two years to post all my 365 photos. Taking images isn't a problem--processing to an acceptable standard, them uploading and blogging about them are proving to demand more time than I have available. But I'm still trying!

As I've said before, I'm a passion flower fan, and love passion fruit of all types. The fruit themselves are almost as alien as the flowers. Here's the inside of the rind from a passiflora edulis fruit--the commercial purple variety. The pulpy arils that envelop the seeds grow from puckered swellings lining the inside of the rind in a trio of vertical strips. There's something otherworldly about this. Can you tell I'm fascinated by this plant?

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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132/365: Cornfield

A cornfield growing outside of San Marcos. The semi-wet spring has been good for crops in the area.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

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131/365: Yellow Rose

Made a quick visit to the San Marcos airport today to get a few shots of some of the World War II era warbirds they maintain and fly there. The Commemorative Air Force (formerly known as the Confederate Air Force) does a great thing, preserving these pieces of history. This B-25 is even available for the general public to buy flights on, although it'll set you back nearly $400 to experience that bit of history up close.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

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130/365: Puffy Taco

The famous (or infamous, if you prefer) Puffy Taco. Folks in or from San Antonio will appreciate this one.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon FD 500mm f/8 reflex
Lisa On Location

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