[/caption] So many people are tired of all the rain that we’ve had in Oregon during the month of May. I however, can’t love it any more. I have seen some of the most colorful and spectacular flowers during the month of May. The roses are stalling a bit but that just means that they will be more vibrant and resilient to the hot weather this summer. The spring flowers along the Gorge and the mountain foothills are amazing. On Sunday I spent most of my day at the Oregon Iris Festival, just north of Keizer. I forgot how many different types of colors there were. It’s pretty amazing how many hybrids they can grow. I lost count after about 20 different colors. They ranged from deep purple to bright white. They also smell like candy and each of them smell exactly the same. They are also one of the most alien looking flowers that I’ve photographed. They kind of look like the creature from the movie “Predator”. The same flower takes on several different images as you move about it. I picked one of them and photographed it 15 times and each time the flower looked different than the previous photo. I used my 50mm macro/prime lens to capture all of my macro shots. I never used a tripod since I am always moving and don’t want to spend all of my time setting up a tripod. I just make sure to remove my CIR-PL and only use my warming filter and the UV filter. The warming filter will ensure a more warming photo and will enhance every color of its subject. The CIR-PL will only make it harder to get a crisp shot since the shutter time needed will increase. To get this shot I set my ISO to 100 and kept the exposure level at about 0. the exposure time was at 1/512 seconds and the F stop was at 8. I was about 4 inches from the flower and I had set the menu to Auto Exposure. I was able to get several shots of the flowers with bumble bees and some lady bugs in the shots. It’s amazing how mellow insects are when you’re working with a macro lens. Now is the time to take advantage of the spring flowers throughout the Pacific Northwest.