I was away in the big city for the weekend and missed out on some excellent weather. Luckily, the flowers didn't go anywhere and I was able to get some shots after returning home. Today we have some hyacinth flowers, of the pink variety, which I didn't even realize grew in my front yard. I only happened upon them on my way towards the magnolia trees, which are also in bloom.

Since it was cloudy this evening, I adjusted the white balance accordingly and managed to get warmer colors than what the auto-AWB gave me. The lighter color of the flowers (compared to the bluish/purplish ones) also worked to my advantage, giving me a little bump in shutter speed.

Here's a close-up for the last shot. I have to say that I really enjoy getting close-up views of flowers.

Hiya, Cynth!

What a pleasant surprise! A couple of days ago, I had mentioned that flowers in my backyard should be blossoming soon. So what have we here today? Some hyacinth already blooming!

Hyacinthus orientalis

Last year, I began my photographic adventure with these very same hyacinth plants. Some 15k+ photographs later, I've come full-circle. This year, I decided to use my DMC-FZ35 instead of my DMC-ZS3 since the former allows some more manual inputs. While the down-sampled images yield similar image quality, last year's ZS3 results seem cleaner than the FZ35's. Nonetheless, I'm pleased that the 2011 season has begun!

There are currently two cultivars in the backyard, one that is blue/purple and the other that is dark red/maroon in color. The white mass in the above picture is a clump of hydrangea flowers from last year's season. 

Here is an overhead view of one of the hyacinth clusters. For these photos, there was limited sunlight due to the setting sun so I was at the mercy of low-light and low-shutter speed. Steadying myself for these photos challenging especially with a light breeze and many attempts ended up being overly blurry.

For the last photo, we have some lilac buds, which should be blooming soon. The weather forecast is suggesting warmer and warmer days, so these will be beautiful flowers in short time!