Gibbs Garden in Spring

“She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
“Winter is dead.”
― A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

Spring is an amazing time for photographers.  There are beautiful changes everywhere just waiting to be captured.  There are places that are high on my list to photograph each spring.  One of these places is Gibbs Garden.  In the spring, there are more than twenty million daffodils blooming in the garden.  Two years ago, I took in this magnificent sight for the first time.  Last spring, although I visited the garden in the spring, I missed the peak of the daffodils and just caught the tail end of the bloom.

The garden was scheduled to open the first week of March.  The daffodils, with the unseasonably warm temperatures, could not wait until March.  Since the daffodils already began blooming, the garden opened weeks early.

Luck has a great deal to do with photography.  Luckily, I was looking at social media this weekend when a friend of mine, who belongs to a couple of organizations that I am also a member of, posted that he visited Gibbs Garden Saturday and saw quite a show of daffodils.  Two friends and I had agreed upon a destination to photograph Sunday morning.  This destination was chosen from three possibilities.  After consulting about pros and cons of each location, we chose destination B for our Sunday trip.  When I saw that Gibbs was in full bloom, I tossed out the idea to the group to abandon our carefully decided plan and drive excessive amounts of time to photograph at Gibbs.  This idea was tossed out after 8:00 p.m. Saturday night.  By 9:00 p.m., we had a new plan to drive to Gibbs Garden.  This was definitely my kind of group!  I love the adventure of it all!

We were all thrilled to find that the conditions at Gibbs were absolutely perfect!  The blooming daffodils met us at every turn.

If you had any uncertainty about where to find the daffodils, there were signs leading the way.

There were many people enjoying the gardens.  In order to take pictures without people in them, you needed to wait, and wait, and then wait some more.  Another thing that you often needed to wait for was for the sun to go behind a cloud so that you could get the scene evenly lit.

Sometimes, instead of eliminating people from the shot, you find that their presence adds to the image.

Sometimes, when I am at a location, I find something that draws my attention that I was not expecting.

My favorite image from the day is a very busy image.  I know it will not appeal to everyone, but something about it just captured what I was experiencing at that moment in the garden.

My Sunday involved driving 9 hours round trip to spend 6 hours photographing in this gorgeous location.  I am so thankful that my great friends were willing to do the same!

I simply cannot wait for my next photography adventure!

I visited Gibbs Garden the last time in November.  You can see my fall images from Gibbs Garden here.