This week, Ann-Christine shares a wonderful collection of floral images in her challenge called “Flower Favorites and Why.” She writes, “Now we are looking forward to seeing your favourite flowers and plants…” You can read her entire challenge post here.

Lynn and I are on the Norwegian Dawn cruise ship, headed southerly toward the Mediterranean Sea and Rome. On Saturday we left London for the Southampton cruise port and with minimal fuss, we were on board and getting our sea legs again.

As I don’t like to pay for the expensive, and relatively poor-quality Internet connections on a cruise ship, I have their minimal account which is just enough to read emails and hopefully post this week’s challenge response. I am writing this post in Microsoft Word while I am offline, and when the editing is done, I can simply copy and paste the text into WordPress to keep my Internet access from exceeding my account limits. For this challenge, I used Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop to create a single collage of my favorite floral images captured over the years.

Now, for the “Why”. Starting from the rose in the upper left and moving clockwise around the image, here are the stories I remember. That rose was sitting on the counter at the gym I attend regularly, placed there earlier that day by another guest that had just cut off the beautiful flower. This image was captured with my cell phone and the only manipulation of the image was to add the watermark. I’ve never before captured an image that couldn’t use at least a minimal edit. My cell phone captured the delicate details in the petals and a fluorescent light from above illuminated the flower with a soft light.

The yellow flower was growing in a garden in Fargo.

The lily is one of my favorite images captured at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.

The orange flower was growing in a public garden at North Dakota State University in Fargo.

The next two images were captured in Arizona in the Phoenix Botanical Garden, one of our favorite places to visit during our winter stays in Buckeye.

The final image is of a plant captured in a Mexican garden that showcases unusual plants, most of which have some form of medicinal properties.

Please forgive the abbreviated nature of this post. After all, it’s just about time for our breakfast buffet, our lunch on the lido deck… or is it time for the ice cream break… maybe the dinner hour… whichever it is, Lynn and I are not starving to death on this cruise. By the time this post publishes, we will be on an excursion in one of several stops in Spain.

Thanks to Ann-Christine for allowing me to find and publish this collage of my favorite floral images.

John Steiner