Adelaide and Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens, 11 and 13 July 2024
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So here we are, at an ancient colonial mansion with a river of stone flowing by, and inside a time bubble that preserves the exact colour of the nineteenth century. (The world was more sepia toned then).

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Old imperial gardens may have had a little pavillion or two, such as this, but since there is no one here dressed in purple, it’s the plants instead.

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Here we have a place for secret meetings, conspiracies and dark deeds in alternative realities that confuse night and day.

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The Palm House.  It was probably built by Napoleon in the early nineteenth century, during the period when he conquered Australia without anyone else noticing.

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An ethereal collection of succulents.  Napoleon probably would have approved.

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Climate change can suddenly change everything.  We’ll have to get used to this.

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Blue palms by a black river.

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Is that succulents or snakes curling up around that tree?

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Here, the reality was cracked with a golden light.

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Looking up, I couldn’t even see the stars.

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Not often you get to see freshly laid dinosaur eggs.  Muttaburrasaurus, probably.

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Red waterscape with duck.

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Almost like walking into a film set.

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Wintery views in blue and yellow.

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Red sky.  Is is morning or evening?

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Another pavillion.  No emperors around this one either.

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Settling back to a nice autumn landscape (albeit in the middle of winter).

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This is probably a bit more wintery.

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Ah.  Autumn again.

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A sudden savagely cold snap, just for a minute or two.

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It must be Christmas now.

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Autumn again.  How quickly seasons change.

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The first thirteen images were in Adelaide Botanic Garden; the last nine were in Mount Lofty Botanic Garden. The previous two posts showed “normal” colour images from three botanic gardens of Adelaide but compositions are duplicated between posts only for the second and third last images here.

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Technical note.  My usual editing process (either regular or infrared) is that I do selection and culling in Lightroom.  Selection also involves quick editing, to see what will work.  I then edit in Capture One due to superior masking and colour control.  Finally, I compare what I produce in Capture One with my preliminary edits in Lightroom, and sometimes go back to Capture One for further adjustment. 

For these infrared images, I did quick conversions in Lightroom using LUTs imported from Photoshop, and also my own custom process in Capture One using colour profiles created in 3D LUT Creator, sometimes for that specific image.  In some cases I then preferred the quick Lightroom version, as for 1, 2, 5, 13, 14, 18 and 20.  The remaining fifteen are from Capture One.  In two cases I show versions from each.