These are five of the pictures of camellias from Nuccio’s Nursery in Altadena that I said last week I would share this week. I will share five more immediately afterward in a second ‘Six on Saturday’ post. I am not certain if there is a rule against doing so, but no one seemed to mind when I did the same to share an over abundance of autumn foliar color last autumn. You can find the second post here: https://tonytomeo.com/2019/03/30/six-on-saturday-vanity-ii/
Brent Green, my colleague who I sometimes mention within the context of my articles, typically in a rather unflattering manner, took these pictures nearly two weeks ago. He lives and works nearby, in the Los Angeles region.
Brent takes horrible pictures. He always has. He was wasting my film on bad pictures such as these in 1986. I told him just before he took these pictures that I really wanted GOOD pictures. These are what I got.
Also, Brent is VERY vain. Back in 1986, when we were roommates in Fremont Hall at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, he often had me go get the car to meet him at the bottom of the stairs because he was in that much of a hurry to do whatever he happened to be doing at the time. It might have been getting close to a week since he last got his Grace Jones flat top do done. Perhaps his clothes were getting close to three months old, so he needed a new batch. It was always a rush. The problem was that there was a mirror in our dorm room. I would wait in the red zone at the bottom of the stairs with the engine running for several minutes before going back up to the top floor and most of the way down the long hall to our room to find him staring at himself in that mirror. When I told him that we needed to leave NOW before the car got ticketed, he would still need to add some more Sta-Sof-Fro to his do . . . and stare some more. He had hair back then.
Yes, this is relevant here. Anyway, these are the camellias:
1. Chandleri Elegans or Francine – What do they see off to the right? Why is one cowering behind the other? This picture should have been centered, and wider than tall, or horizontal rather than vertical.
2. Rosette – What is so interesting off to the left that the flower can not look at the camera? Is this supposed to be a picture of the flower low in the picture, or the gravel beyond it?
3. Red Devil – There are a lot of distracted flowers here. What is this one looking at on the ground? Is the gravel that interesting? Perhaps the vinyl cans are. This one should be centered too.
4. Demure – This one looks like an album cover from the 1970s; pale, distracted, and off center against an industrial background. It could be a bad picture, or it could be artistic.
5. Tata – This one looks like a teenager with bad acne looking down before jumping off the high dive.
6. Brent Green – The only good picture of the bunch.
Now . . . how did Brent take such bad pictures of flowers that he could so easily aim the camera at properly, AND take such a perfect selfie without being able to see the picture as he took it? Could it be VANITY?!?
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
So funny, glad you showed us a picture of Brent too! ps the camellia are beautiful 🙂
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YES! Thank you SO much for clarifying that! The CAMELLIAS are beautiful! I will tell Brent you said so . . . immediately!
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Gorgeous Camellias et beautiful pictures in your 2 posts !…🤩
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Thank you, although I did not take the pictures. (My pictures last year were better.)
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Laughter and beautiful plants – magic!
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. . . hmmm . . . . I could have gotten better pictures.
Actually, you should see the pictures for next week. They are of Brent’s home garden, which is very impressive, even in bad pictures.
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Lovely camellias and and such a funny post. Does Brent read your blog? I hope he has a sense of humour.
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Thank you; but Brent is an idiot. He just happens to be the best landscape designer in the Los Angeles region. He insists that I use his lame pictures, but then will not read the post until I have hassled him for days to do so.
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I always thank the flowers/plants, for allowing me to photograph them. Just like people, some are brilliant subjects while others of us aren’t quite as comfortable. I think vanity is the reason many people get striking and superb selfies. They’re willing to practice because it’s important to get the right look out there socially. I rarely take a selfie because I haven’t practiced much and feel pretty inept about the whole procedure to get a decent one.
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I am actually impressed with my selfie. I had not done that before. It was surprisingly easy. I could have gotten it straighter if I had been taking it more seriously. Brent takes selfies very regularly, and as you can see, is much better at it than he is at taking important pictures.
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Photographic quality aside, these are lovely camellias! btw, there is a basic rule of photography that a single subject should not be centered — Brent nicely used the “rule of 13’s” in these shots — well done!
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hmmm . . . well . . . . He is still an idiot. I must call and remind him right now.
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Oh dear – those photos look like some of mine! Thankfully there’s good photo manipulation software so I can crop the ones that are off-centre – otherwise just tell people it’s artistic and hope for the best…
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I left them uncropped to show how bad Brent’s pictures are when I ask him for good pictures. I probably could have gotten better pictures if I had not stressed that I want ‘good’ pictures.
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Lovely laughter for a Monday morning, many thanks to you and Brent! I’m quite liking ‘Demure’. Why are there so many camellias to choose from? Sigh.
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From what I can tell, plenty of people think it’s enough to point a camera in the general direction of the subject and press the button. Composition: what’s that? Background: what’s that?
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Brent certainly knows what they are when taking a selfie.
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Too funny! I love the album cover description. Lovely camellias. Mine don’t flower much but they are planted close to some large larch trees. I should probably feed them more.
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Camellias have the potential to be finicky, although I still can not figure out what they are finicky about. They always bloomed so reliably for us while we were growing them on the arm. However, now that I work with mature specimens, some of the biggest and best bloom sparsely, and some did not bloom at all last year or this year. I do not even know what colors they are.
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