Wrights Water Garden - Lotus Festival

If you are ever bored in February, then you should head out to Wrights Water Gardens at Patumahoe in South Auckland. Every year in the first week of February, all their Lotus Flowers are out, and the display is breathtaking. I've been twice now, and the only way I can describe it, is that you feel like you've just stepped into a Monet Painting, with all the pinks, blues and greens around you.

I think Lotus flowers are stunning. They are by far, my favourite flower...



I had to keep changing lenses, from my 18-55mm lens if I wanted to get the whole flower in, to my 100mm macro lens to enable me to capture the detail...

Then I had to decide which part I wanted to detail, as every part of the flower seems interesting...

And when the flower petals drop, then the lotus seed pod becomes the most interesting thing to photograph as well. I took lots of images of the pods, and they all turned out well. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them all!

The flower in all the stages of life, is beautiful, from a bud, just opening...

To the complete open flower. Even underneath, from the side, no matter where I put the camera, all I found was beauty...

See....

Even the details in the petals are gorgeous...

I took heaps of images, and I have only just got around to processing them last week. From February!

Oh - and I have yet to finish the images I took in February 2009 as well. Again - I took hundreds of images! Maybe next time I go I should just drink in the view and leave my camera at home?