Photo of the Month - July 2024 | Leonardo Graboski Veiga

Dear readers of Photo of the Month, welcome. In this rehearse, done in a cottage in Jarinu, I bring you a lot of flora.

All photos were captured with a smartphone. Some of them in auto mode and others in manual mode, with post editing on Darktable.

How about we begin with the flowers?

Flowers and Plants

This is the section that cheered me up the most during editing! Flowers and plants are nice because they bring different forms and colors.

Let’s start with a pink rose - or at least what I believe to be a rose… I’m not the brightest when it comes to botany.

I was not sure whether to post all three shots. I prefered to leave it up to readers to choose their favorite.

This other flower was already a bit beaten:

I tried to edit as to highlight the flower amidst the foliage:

Is this a flower or a plant?

In this white and yellow I exaggerated the sharpen effect:

This purple one doesn’t even look like a flower. Is it?

On the next photo we notice it opens its branches. One can also notice it likely would have all flowers open if the shot was taken later:

This yellow one by the pool took a bit of a shower:

It even looks velvety:

A few more live roses…

…others not so much:

This purple flower is also nice to edit and very pretty:

This flower is very tiny - look at the relative size compared to the grass. I noticed it when I went to take a photo of some logs by the lake:

It was hard to make a beautiful and high-quality picture due to its size. A camera with a more adequate lenses would have helped:

Even though I got happy with the result!!

Following the mood, close to the flowers I saw some tiny mushrooms. I could even see a nearly transparent insect landed on this one:

And here is a photo of the mushroom alone:

I was also interested in a big succulent that held a bit of rain water:

A bit closer…

…and closer…

…and closer:

And to wrap this section, a hive of non-plants!

Green Area

The green area of the property is beautiful and big. Let’s begin with a panoramic that shows the entrance of the property and a secondary house that we didn’t use:

In the property there are three lakes. Two of them are shown in the previous picture, split by the dirt road. The third is on the left and can be seen in upcoming pictures. In it, there is a tiny island to contemplate the nature - or may get some fish:

Did you notice a shade in the water? No? Look, there are ducklings:

In the two previous pictures, there was on the background:

A wooden post with the base painted white
Two small logs laying on the left of the post
A rustic stairway on the right of the post, cutting through the forest

Next, here’s a sight of the lake from the small logs…

…and a picture of the stairway - which by the way was one of my favorites:

Let’s go to another perspective. From the entrance, next to the secondary house, we can see the two lakes and the main house on the top of the hill:

There are even some swings for children:

And a paddle boat that nobody risked riding:

Paddle boat swan up close, in a melancholic perspective:

Accommodations

Starting with the beautiful house facade, with its harmonious arches and exposed bricks:

Here’s another perspective from the same arches, this time from the porch:

Here I repeated the above photo in manual mode, although I suffered to adjust the exposure due to the sun. During the editing, I noticed that the latest Darktable release has support for creating an HDR image from several photos, but I’ll have to leave the test for another time: