Evening in the garden

I love wandering in the garden in the late evening. The colours of the flowers seem much more intense. I enjoy seeing the changes from day to day.

Tonight I noticed that Spiraea japonica "Anthony Waterer" has started to flower. It is my favourite spiraea and does well in a shady part of the garden. I'd never noticed the stamens looking so sparkly and bright. This image was taken with my 50mm lens. I then changed to the 100mm macro, but the close up shots somehow lost the magic as the detail of the stamens appeared. There are so many florets that they vied for attention in the images.

This image has had a little selective sharpening of the main subject (using a new layer with overlay in blend mode, plus a high pass filter at 15%, masked and the area to be sharpened uncovered with a soft edged brush). Then levels were used to selectively darken the outer edges. Compressed to 1024 pix and uploaded. (If I had time and energy I would consider cloning out the leaves and buds where they spill onto the bottom edge of the image. I think they can be a bit distracting.)

Time for bed before the long walk to High Cup Nick tomorrow. We have to drive to Dufton first.