Today's Flower #140: Just a Pretty Close-up

Today's Flower #139: Taipei Flora Expo

 I was at the Taipei Flora Expo again on March 31.  Rather than go for the flowers in the beautiful landscaped ground.  I joined the line and tried to get into various exposition halls.

Many of the more dramatic and famous expositions, require lining up for tickets as early as 4 o'clock in the morning.  I opted for the less crowed but still very beautiful Expo Dome.  It hosts various flora competitions.

Here are my first series of takes in the Expo Dome.  Because it is indoor, I have relative more relax time to do some close-up.

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Today's Flower #135: King Car Orchid Park

Following a short stay to see the migratory birds at the wetland of Yilan county, my trip with "Natural Kingdom" continuos with a visit to the King Car Orchid Park.

The name "King Car" sounds very strange, it is the name of a company that started its business in soft drink.  It makes a particular brand of canned coffee called "Mr. Brown", which can be seen in most Chinese supermarket around the world.  It is also very popular in Taiwan.

After the success of its coffee business, they have branched into many other businesses, from growing orchid, shrimp farming, human disease diagnosis to whisky making.

Yilan was separated from Taipei by a huge mountain range.  A few years ago, it was finally connected through a tunnel, which is the third longest tunnel in the world.  The tunnel shrink the traveling time between Taipei to Yilan from 2 hours to half an hour.

"King Car" has been quietly investing in Yilan for a long time, purchasing many large stretches of land.  For example, the wetland where we watched migratory birds is right next to a "King Car" future shrimp farm.

Its biotech research center, also located in Yilan, developed the first approved in vitro diagnostic test by Taiwan health authority for human papilloma virus using microarray technology.

The other amazing business venture of "King Car" is to develop a whiskey making business in Yilan.  The county has been famous for the purity of water from its mountain spring.  The company hired engineers from Scotland and built a state-of-art whiskey making factory.

The whiskey is called "Kavalan", named after the aborigine tribe native to Yilan.  It has won many awards since it has been marketed.  It is perfect to pour into the "King Car" coffee to make a Yilan version of "Irish coffee".

"King Car" has been into orchid business for many years.  Taiwan is one of the world largest Orchid producing country.  Because of its tropical climate, many exotic orchids are originated in Taiwan.

One of the three world largest orchid exhibitions and trade shows is held in Taiwan this week.  "King Car" is one of the major industrial orchid producers and exporters in Taiwan.

With such good business mind, it is not surprise, that "King Car" is also in the tourism business in Yilan.  We can wonder at the natural beauty of Yilan in its natural park, admire the beauty of orchid in its orchid farm, have a good tasting of Kavalan whiskey in its distillery and finally have a cup of coffee at its coffee house headquarter to keep us awake on the way back to Taipei.

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ABC Wednesday: F is for Taipei International Flora Exposition

Taipei International Flora Exposition is held from 2010/11/6 to 2011/4/25.  It is an International Horticulture Exposition recognized by AIPH, the International Association of Horticultural Producers and by BIE, Bureau International des Expositions.  The first exposition is held in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1960.  Taipei is very proud to host this event and the city has spent a lot of efforts and money to organize this exposition.  By mid-February, there had been over 5 million people visited this event.  Since last December and most of January, the temperature was around 10 degree C.  For your people in the Northern Hemisphere, that is such a nice comfortable temperature.  For us it was too cold.  Only till last week. we had a nice warm half day with beautiful sunshine.  I went for a nice walk around the beautiful ground.

The most impressive exhibition is revolved around several exhibition halls.  However, that requires  standing in line for long hours.  I took the next best, to walk around the massive planted flower beds.

Not many exotic flower plants, but it is the massive planting that is impressive.

All the flowers are in perfect condition and in full bloom.

You can imagine the amount of work needed to put in to maintain these flower beds.  They are replaced according to the flowering season.

As always, photographing flowers is not the easiest thing.  The exposure meter always tend to over expose.  I have to read the RGB histogram of the image on the LCD at the back of the camera to make sure the exposure is correct, especially the red is not over exposed.

Many countries come to participate in the exposition.  These beautiful tulips are from, guess who, Holland!

I did not bother to bring my macro lens with me.  However, my new 28-300 VR lens performed quite well in close-up.

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ABC Wednesday: D is for Dandelion

I always consider Dandelion as a weed and a nonsense for the lawns. However, I must admit that it does have lovely yellow color flowers.

The yellow flower heads turn into balls of silver tufted fruits, which every kid loves.

That includes our lovely granddaughter.  Whenever she got a chance in the Spring, she would pick up every Dandelion in the neighborhood and blow on it.

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Today's Flower #100 & ABC Wednesday: X is for XinWu Lotus Farm

It is the lotus flower season again and the Lotus Festival is held every year at Xinwu (新屋) and Gyanyin (觀音) townships of Taoyuan County (桃園).  The area is a low-laying area near the western coast of Taiwan, just an hour drive from Taipei.  It used to be covered with rice-paddy.  After Taiwan joined WTO, it is no longer economically feasible to grow rice any more.  As in Korea, the situation had a great impact to the tradition of the local farming community in Taiwan.  Some of the rice fields around Xinwu and Gyanyin area have been converted to lotus pond, both for tourism and for its seeds and roots.

Xinwu means "new house", the phonic translation can also be Sinwu.  I need a "X", thus it is Xinwu.  Gyanyin means "watching the sound" and it is the Chinese translation of "Avalokltesvara" buddha's name.  By "watching" the sound of the universe in her/his mind, Avalotesvara obtained the eternal wisdom and became a buddha.  It is all very "Zen".  Let us go back to the more practical matter of photographing Lotus flower, where the buddha used to sit on.  You can go back to my old blog here, to learn the difference of Nelumbo (lotus) and Nymphaea (water lilly).

Both Nelumbo and Nymphaea are very photogenic.  I was told that they should be photographed in the early morning, when their blooms are at its best.  In reality, you really want to only shot in the early morning.  Who can stand the heat of the mid-day and early afternoon sun of June in Taiwan, not the flowers and not the photographers.  A single solitary lotus in perfect bloom can some way reflecting the light to make it almost like glowing against a background of lotus leaves.

Some times we want some seed pot and flower bud in the background to add interest and the yellow seed pod in a full bloomed flower gives even more colors.

A long telephone lens help us not only blur the background but also keep us, the photographer on the solid ground, dry and clean.  One way to get us really into muddy situation is try to photograph the lotus with a wide-angle lens.

However, a wide-angle lens does give us a totally different prospective of the flower and the lotus field.

Another way to get real muddy is to try to do a close-up.  But the flower is so big, it is usually not necessary for a macro lens, just a telephone lens can take us close enough.

Grace went to her ladies' club outing last weekend.  I went to photograph the lotus by myself.  They were shot with my Nikon D700 with 80-400mm and 20 mm lenses.

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Camera-Critters #80 & Today's Flower 62

Grace and I are traveling in the US for the following one month. We will spend the next 10 days at Yosemite and Sierra to photograph Fall color. Thus we are posting a single blog for Camera-Critters and Today's Flower. Can you see the critter in this picture? It is the yellow mantises on the leave.

Can you find the critter in this one? It is the green mantises perfectly camouflaged itself behind the stem.

Here is a closer look. The black dots in its compound eyes actually followed my movement. It tried to hide from me behind the stem.

Now where is the critter in this picture? It is the ant at the center of the picture. Can you see it?

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Today's Flowers #59: What is it?

We saw this lovely plant during our walk in the "Flying Cow Ranch". It is a shrub/tree almost 2-meter high. We have no idea what it is.

We tried to ask the little boy fairy by the tree, but he just laughed at us.

She was nicer and tried to whisper the name to us, but we could not hear her little voice.

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Camera-Critters #77: Danaus

Common Tiger, Striped Tiger

Danaus genutia

黑脈樺斑蝶

Plain Tiger, African Monarch

Danaus chrysippus

樺斑蝶

This is our fourth posting of butterflies of "Flying Cow Ranch". These two very closely resemble the American Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus). They are so colorful, not common and plain at all. Can you tell the difference between them? One has veins on the wings marked with broad black bands.

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Today's Flowers #58: Squash Flower

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Camera-Critters #76: Tirumala septentrionis & Ideopsis similis

Dark Blue Tiger

Tirumala septentrionis

小紋青斑蝶

Ceylon Blue Glassy Tiger

Ideopsis similis

硫球青斑蝶

This is our third posting of butterflies of "Flying-Cow Ranch" for Camera-Critters. Can you tell the difference between these two butterflies?

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Camera-Critters #75: Swinhoe's Chocolate Tiger (Parantica swinhoei)

This is the second posting of butterflies of "Flying-Cow Ranch". On the two sides of the walk leading to the butterfly greenhouse, they are planted en mass of these white flowers. So many butterflies dotted on the plants. At first glance, they all looked alike. In reality, they are many different species.

This one called Swinhoe's Chocolate Tiger (Parantica swinhoei) 小青斑蝶. Apparently, it is a unique species of Taiwan. If you look for it in Google or Wikipedia, you will not be able to find much information.

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Camera-Critters #74 & Today's Flower #56

The name of these beautiful big white butterflies is called Paper Kite or Rice Paper Butterfly (Idea leuconoe clara) and the multicolor flower is called Spanish Flag (Latana camara).

Last weekend, we saw these butterflies with the colorful Spanish Flag during our visit to Flying Cow Ranch, which is about two hours drive south of Taipei. The "Flying" in the name of the farm is not referred to the cow but to the various kind of butterflies around its butterfly walk and greenhouse.

The butterfly is about 7 cm in size and moves elegantly. More importantly, it moves slowly, which makes the photographing process much easier.

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Nephila pilipes (人面蜘蛛)

As we described in our last blog. The Chinese name for the Nephila pilipes is "Human Face Spider". This weekend, we got a chance to photograph the spider from its back. The spider usually has its head pointed downward. I flipped the picture 180 degree, so you can see better the human face on its back.

Camera-Critters #73: Insects at Yangmingsan

Nephila pilipes (人面蜘蛛)

Yangmingsan National Park is actually within the city limit of Taipei. It is one of the few national parks in the world that are so close to the metropolis. It is a volcanic group of mountain ranges. We went to the area two weeks ago and these pictures of various insects were taken during that trip. The Chinese name of this colorful spider is human face spider. Its back looks like a human face.

Aquarius elongatus (Gerridae/Water striders, 水黽)

This amazing creature really was walking on the surface of the water.

Anotogaster sieboldii (Giant Spiketail, 無霸勾蜓)

This one caught in the mid-air is the largest dragonfly of Taiwan.

Neurothemis rambyrii ramburii (Red Percher, 善變蜻蜓)

Orthetrum triangulare (Lesser Pruinose Skimmer, 鼎脈蜻蜓)

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