A cream carnation

click photo to enlarge

My introduction to the word "carnation" came at a quite young age. In the austere years of the 1950s Sunday tea (I'm from the north of England, so to all you effete southerners that's dinner!) was sometimes tinned salmon and salad concluded with tinned fruit topped with Carnation evaporated milk. For me the "afters" was the highlight of the meal.

I can still picture the tin with the word "Carnation" on a red background, the letter "C" enlarged to enclose the following "a". The product is, apparently, still sold, but I have no desire to re-live this particular part of my childhood. Times and tastes have moved on!

In one of my earlier posts I showed a photograph of a pink carnation taken through a standard digital zoom with a screw-on achromatic macro lens attached. When I noticed some cream carnations in the house the other day I thought I'd try a similar shot, but this time with a 35mm dedicated macro lens. I can't say that there's a massive difference, but the dedicated lens is probably sharper, is capable of greater depth of field, and does allow a bigger range of distances from which the shot can be taken. What I liked about this shot, taken in shade, is the way the petals have picked up colours from the surroundings, and introduced depth and coldness to the edges of the image.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen