First Set of Iris Blooms to Share

It has taken far too long for me to get to our spring blooms, but I finally made it to that part of my Lightroom edit. Each year I have tried to document our spring flowers and I did this year, I just never got to the editing part. Last year this time was insane with colors, see Our Spring Flowers Blooming Out, but this year our area, in the Southeast U.S., is in the middle of a pretty severe drought, so our spring rains never came this time. We weren't sure if we would see any colors this time, but the iris blooms are one plant that doesn't really care if there is rain or isn't rain, they will give you a field full of color regardless.

This is our first spring after planing our huge Iris Garden all last year, so we had (and still have) huge expectations for the hybrid Iris blooms this year. Throughout the year last year we built raised beds and planted over 65 unique hybrid Tall Bearded Iris, see Progress Update on Raised Iris Bed Construction for the details, and now we get to see what all the hard work produced.

So, if you love Iris blooms, you are in for a bonanza of unique Iris colors over the next few weeks on this site.

I love these first frames created with a vintage Nikon lens. The Iris take on an almost painting-like quality. Between the old lens, the wind, and the wildflowers, these were some of my favorite of early Spring.

My 50 Year Old Vintage Nikon Lens

Those first images above were all the transplants from last year that we spread out all over the property around the house (not the hybrids, stay tuned). And they were actually shot with a lens that was released by Nikon in 1978, the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 Ai-S.

I picked up this manual focus lens, well used, several years ago, and every time I take an extra minute to use it I remember why I like it so much. This lens is going to be much softer than today's standard mirrorless lenses, but it has so much character built into it's glass that it is nearly impossible to replicate today using "new" lenses or creative editing techniques.

My only quarrel with this lens is that I don't take it out more often. In my mind I "don't have time to use it." You have to completely change your mindset in time spent and quantifiable results. You can't just do the spray and pray technique with this combination, you have to be intentional and slow.

Using a 10 year old DSLR and a 50 year old lens takes practice and patience. Somehow, it takes more of both now than it did when I was just shooting this setup every day. I have a list of Ai-S lenses I would like to find used some day, by then the patience required may not be achievable, but I love the results.

All White Tall Bearded Iris Blooms

The all white Iris blooms this year were absolutely amazing! I never really gave them much notice in years past because they tended to be a little weak looking, and of course the all white almost disappeared in a sunny photo. Not so this year. They had beautiful large blooms with wonderful texture, bright yellow tongues, and a little bit of the yellow and white tiger stripes in the back.

If there is one thing our most recent Lightroom updates have done is make it easier to work with the very edges of the histogram. Maybe it's always been that way and I just didn't notice until now, but I find working with dark blacks and bright whites to be much better now. The point is to see texture in the all white, not just a white wash out.

Mixed Colors and Wildflowers

One of the biggest surprises of the early spring flowers were the Sweet William wildflowers (the red ones below). These wildflowers came up in mass, and stayed, for the duration. They just came up and provided a swath of red in an area covered with purple and white, for weeks on end.

In case you were wondering where the hybrid Iris blooms are... stay tuned, they are coming up soon. Right now, current day, about 75% of of our bulbs from last year have bloomed and I can't wait to share them with everyone. See you again soon!