Tulipmania 2014 Part 1: In miniature

Since we got a family pass to Gardens by the Bay last year, my brother (practically a professional photographer) has been wanting to go down and shoot the flowers.  A couple of weeks ago, Tulipmania presented a great opportunity and one Saturday afternoon, he asked if I wanted to join him.  

We sought respite from the heat in the pleasantly chilly glass domes and while HS shot on film, I brought my 35mm workhorse and his macro extensions - little black plastic rings that can turn your lenses into macro ones by introducing some distance between the camera body and the glass.

I took wider shots obviously, but I also really enjoyed the different perspectives the macro extensions gave me.  I could get right up close to a flower and see the delicate filaments of its stamen or the soft, mint green burrs on the edges of succulents.  It was an entirely different world from the sweep of glowing tulips or the harried weekend throng.  Through the macro lens, the rest of the world falls away, falls silent.

I'm free to focus on the perfect symmetry of cactus spines or the heavy yellow-gold crush of pollen in the heart of a flower.

Occasionally, I pulled out to look at the bigger picture, like here with the sole bloom on the edge of a succulent.  I never realised how these plants reproduced.  Colour buds in the middle of them, startling in its vitality.

Standing there with my nose in the flowers brought to mind my favourite haiku.  Oddly enough, it's by Dean Koontz:

"Whiskers of the cat,
 Webbed toes on my swimming dog;
 God is in details."
                              -- The Book of Counted Sorrows