Image of the week #17

Spring is a fun time of year, here in L.A. it can mean anything from hot spells, to rain, to grey overcast skies, and this year it was a little strange. First we got hardly any rain during our normal rainy season and had heat instead, the lack of rain and heat really messed up the normal wildflower prospects. So you have to wonder to other places to find some flowers. This weeks image is from the Huntington Library gardens. They have a very nice cactus section and a lot of them were in the processing of blooming.  This weeks image was also taken with my new camera, the Fuji X-Pro 1. I really like this new camera, a very nice and compact, well at least more compact than the dslr I normally use. Great optics, great image quality and all packaged in an interesting retro kind of case. A nostalgic trip back to rangefinder type cameras, although not a rangefinder per se, the handling is very similar. Great camera. Since Adobe has not released the raw file processing ability I have been using the in camera jpgs and it is capable of generating great images. This weeks image was taken with the Fuji 35mm f1.4 lens and using the Velvia film simulation mode. I bracketed the exposure and blending the files using exposure fusion. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.