Last Friday I visited Ladew Topiary Gardens just north of Baltimore to prepare for the field trip portion of the Nature Photo class I am teaching at Johns Hopkins University. Because of the warm spring, the tulips, azaleas, and other flowers which should have been at their prime at this time were beginning to fade. At first disappointed, I changed my mind as I saw a number of interesting photo subjects and began to experiment with unusual subjects and abstractions. The tulips petal was shot with a 105 mm Nikon Macro lens at its closest focusing distance. For the fern I hand held the lens so I used 1600 ISO and the ripples were shot at 1000. The iron face was from a chair and its shadow. The results were surprising. See the photos that follow and catch one of the classes I teach in nature photography at Johns Hopkins University and Norfolk Botanical Gardens. Check my web site for details. www.ospreyphoto.com 
