Caught in the rain

Walking off to the Botanic Gardens was seen as a way to clear my head.  I keep suffering from headaches, so a gentle stroll off to the Gardens was considered a possible remedy.  A bit of fresh air, some gentle exercise ... Sadly it hasn't worked, but I managed a few photos I thought you might like.

The first shot was taken outside the Visitor Centre at Auckland's Botanic Gardens.  As you approach the visitor centre there's three "manufactured" palm to the left of the entrance that you can see in the image above.  On the right of the entrance there's some natural palms.  Quite a nice contrast, but today I was quite taken with the man made palms.  Steely blue came to mind, hence the tones and colours you seen in the image.  I left the more curvy twiggy bits top right to support the curvy contrast of the wall.  Perhaps let me now what you think of the image.

Second shot in this post was taken in the herb garden.  I was playing with my 50mm lens and enjoying the shallow depth of field achievable when the lens is opened up a bit.  I'm not sure what the flower is, bit it seemed quite pretty.  I wanted to get the small blooms in focus on a diagonal but get a buttery bokeh effect of some greens behind the flowers.  Lightroom was used to pull back the white flowers.  Quite a bit of contrast in this shot and I wanted detail in each of the flowers without making the background too dark.  A pleasing image?  Perhaps let me know what you think.

Something you may have noticed that intrigues me is the way rain drops sit on foliage.  During today;s walk I was really spoilt for choice as I got caught in a rain shower.  There was rain drops everywhere!  Anyway, a couple of my favourite shots from today are images three and four in this post.