PCQC photo contest – Flowers

Third place, Lois Haglund Twin Blooms

Third place, Lois Haglund Twin Blooms

First place, Sheri Rogers Bee in Flight

Second place, Denny Huber Forest Flower

The Photo Club of Quail Creek continued with its monthly members’ contest with May having the topic of flowers. Each club member could enter up to three photos taken in the last three years. This subject proved to be very popular and drew 37 entries. All of the photos can be seen on our Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/129343350@N08/albums/72157709019239943.

Sheri Rogers won first place with her photo, Bee in Flight. Sheri commented, “I went exploring to try and find some interesting things I could take some photographs of. Looking for different flowers, wildlife or maybe some interesting birds, I found a small patch of these thistles that were buzzing with bees. I used a fast shutter speed in hopes to get a shot of the flower and bee(s). My goal was to not get stung in the process! The light was perfect, and I just kept shooting different angles. This shot was the only one with the bee in flight. I love how you can see the bee’s wings and they appear to almost be moving.” The photo was taken with a Nikon D3300, 1/2000 sec at f/7.1, ISO 400 and a focal length of 200 mm.

Denny Huber took second place with his photo, Forest Flower. Denny commented, “This flower was all alone on Bear Wallow trail on Mount Lemmon. I was struck by the three phases of life it was showing: green buds, a full yellow flower and the wilted red stalk, ready to fall off. The blurry deep greens of the forest set the flower off nicely. Because the deep forest was so dark, the ISO ended up at 6400 and so the image was a bit grainy. The main push in post processing was to try to reduce the graininess, but I kept the colors as true as I could.”

The camera was a Canon EOS Rebel t6, 1/200 sec, f/22, and a focal length of 141 mm.

The photo Twin Blooms by Lois Haglund placed third. Lois said, “There was no shortage of subject matter for the May contest featuring flowers. Everything was in bloom in Quail Creek this spring! On one of my walks in the neighborhood, I saw this plant on Thunder Chief and thought the two blooms were gorgeous. I spent several minutes photographing them from all angles. This shot showed them off the best. I used my Canon EOS 70D at f/9.0, 1/320 sec and ISO-100.”

The Photography Club of Quail Creek has a monthly photo contest for its members and also schedules numerous photo field trips for members throughout the year. Meetings are held the second Wednesday of the month at 7:00 p.m. at the Kino Conference Center, Mesquite Room. Room venue could vary each month. Consult the club’s constantly updated website at http://www.pcqc.org, as well as the weekday HOA What’s Happening for additional information.