I have a secret.  Don’t tell Squirt.  The last time we bought him pansies, I didn’t give them to him right away.  I took them to the backyard and photographed them.  Then he got to devour them.

I have another secret.  I wanted to try photographing pansies in rain, but there was no rain in the forecast.  My solution?  A garden hose hanging from my crape myrtle!  That and a slowish shutter speed make for nice rain shots.

Usually when I use a hose or spray bottle to make artificial rain drops, it looks really fake.  But this time the hose did a pretty good job.  My favorite shot from the day was a line of water droplets on the pansy’s stem.  The water droplets reflected the grassy area behind me.  I created my own texture by applying the Fractalius filter to an image of falling water droplets.  That texture was a nice finishing touch to the droplet image.

After a while, the pansy couldn’t take the force of the water droplets anymore.  The stem broke off and the flower tumbled down to the mulch.  The sun came out and shone on the poor little flower getting battered by water.

Sometimes the best shot of a flower is from the back.  I liked how the pale green sepals joined the purple and yellow petals.  I added a touch of Fractalius to glitz it up a bit.

By the time I was done, I was totally soaked, and Rich was laughing at me.  Squirt got his pansies after they dried off!  Then I got inspired and tried another series of shots with the hose.  I’ll write more about those in my next post.