Nature in B&W

There is a photography newsletter I receive once a week from the Digital Photography School and each week it poses a challenge for the weekend.  When I have time, I try to do the challenge, although I usually don't post my results.  This week the challenge is B&W Nature photography.  I decided to pull out my 100mm macro lens that I haven't played around with much lately, and go into the back yard to see what I could find.  I'm posting a few of the ones I like.  They show the spring beauty of a hosta, Lady Bank's rose and the tiny flowers from a laurel spire.  The day was a little breezy, which makes macro photography a little difficult, and some of the images are not as crisp as I'd like due to the wind.  Also, when you do macro work with this level of magnification, every pollen spore shows up.  As you know, we've had lots of pollen lately, so I had fun zapping all those little dots in Photoshop to get something that wasn't too speckled.