Every year, TulipFest comes to the Capital District. And when I’m able, I take pictures of the beautiful tulips and flower arrangements.
Sunday morning. I’ve already respooled four or five rolls of 120 film onto narrower 620 spools, all ready for shooting with my Kodak Medalist II camera. Yes, this year I’m going to capture some beautiful tulip pictures in Washington Park with my medium-format red-leathered shooter. Yeah, I could have shot these tulips with my Nikon digital gear, but I want to shoot these flowers with my film equipment this year.
After I arrived at Tulipfest… and walked around trying to find the best layout of tulips that would work well with my camera and film… and after waiting for everyone else to photograph the tulips with their cameras and cell phones and whatnot…
I saw it. I saw what looked to me like the perfect shot. Sunlight’s in the best position. I can set up my tripod for tack-sharp imaging. Let’s put this together.
It was a bright yellow tulip, surrounded by a grove of white-red-striped tulips, with a border of white tulips at the base.
I took a horizontal shot with my E-100 film.
Okay, that looked nice… let’s see what happens when I get this image with Ektar film.
Pull back… get everything in focus… use that tripod… use that rangefinder… get everything tack sharp… and…
Pow. I like this picture. I like it a lot.
And then, just for the hell of it – and because, for some reason, I had a respooled roll of Kodak Ektachrome 64T film that’s supposed to only be used when shooting with a tungsten flash – I took a picture of myself. It’s one of those “shadow selfies” that I’ve been taking a lot of lately.
I really like the juxtaposition of the yellow flower surrounded by all the other tulips. It’s almost as if the garden appreciated individuality – heck, almost as if it was encouraged and celebrated.
Standing out among the crowd.
Awesome.
UPDATE: I cropped the third picture down to just show the yellow and red-white tulips, with the title of “All Hail the Yellow King.” No, that’s not a reference to True Detective, or at least I don’t think it is… really haven’t watched that show… sorry…
And, believe it or not, I’ve already earmarked this picture for one – maybe two – photo competitions this year. At least it’s on the shortlist.
Chuck The Writer 
LIKE, as they say.
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I agree – Awesome. It’s looking like a good year for photo competition.
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I like it. As I was reading I had the same thought as you at the end, crop all the other flowers out but the yellow and striped. You might try a horizontal rather than vertical crop, allowing you to include all of those striped ones all the way across, to better emphasize the contrast with the yellow one. If you really wanted to go out on a limb, you could also try a selective desaturation on it, leaving only the yellow one in color. In any case, great shot.
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