NEON

The last bloom of the summer on this guy. Now I've got to be patient (not my strongest suit) for 11 months till it blooms again :(

I took a bunch of pictures of it, I'll probably subject you to some of them another day ;) For now, here's one where the color is probably completely out of gamut, but I had fun playing!



ISO 500, f/6.3 @ 1/160. Hand held, window light.

Surprised anything is in focus

It was a little breezy out the other night when I shot this (and my shutter speed was pretty slow for the conditions), so I'm surprised it is even remotely in focus!

One thing I really like about our new yard is the color and texture of the plant materials. A lot of the leaf colors are either very deep red/purple or chartreuse. This is the minute flower of a deep purple Coral Bells/Heuchera (the blooms are maybe 1/4" across) and the shrub behind it with gorgeous chartreuse leaves is Mexican Mock Orange/Choisya Sundance.



ISO 400. F4.5 @ 1/125s

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?

.....I see dinner looking at me?



Brett, Colin and I stopped by the zoo for a couple of hours today. It was C's first day off in over a MONTH! I love that he was willing to share it with us, and to get up at a decent hour to have brunch with my Mom as well.

I enjoy having a zoo membership, so we can just stay as long as we feel like, and not worry about "getting our money's worth." Popped the 18-200VR on the camera before we left the house and called it good. I love not having to swap out lenses. It really is working out great for outings like this.

Dandelion

Just HOW quickly does dust settle?

VERY quickly!

I put this water droplet (ok, actually it's glycerin) on the leaf about 3-5 minutes before shooting, and I still had to clone out dust spots (you can still see some of them). GR!



ISO 200, f/5.6 @ 1/160, and yes, I went to the trouble of using my tripod!

Rhodie

with and without texture:

Tiger Lily

Our new yard is TINY, as in teeny, tiny. After all those years of tending a big yard, I really like this little one. The only thing is, we have to be VERY careful about what we choose to put in it, and make sure that we love it all!

I've been spending a lot of time on the gardenweb forums (they are wonderful and will totally SUCK.YOU.IN if you're not careful :) Anyhow, I wandered over to the lily forum the other evening, and did some reading. I decided I wanted to put some northwest native lilies in our yard. Not the big, typical ones like the photo I posted yesterday, but the petite ones.

This guy's slender stalk grows to about 4-5 feet tall and sets these little 2" blooms on it (mine has 4 blooms/buds on it). I only bought one at the garden store the other day to be sure that I like it (I do).....so I'll purchase some bulbs this fall and plant them for the summers to come. I think I may plant them potted though, to me they deserve extra special attention!

Up until the past 6 months or so I've always preferred shooting flowers outdoors, but lately I'm beginning to like shooting them in a controlled environment as well. This was shot in our kitchen this morning, just after the sun moved so it was not directly shining on the table, with a piece of cardstock as the background. I probably should have pulled out the tripod and gotten a deeper DOF, but I was lazy ;)

SOOC



Edited



ISO 250, 3.2 @ 1/160s, handheld

Lily

SOOC and edited

Just playing (and no, I didn't add any water drops to the edited photo, they were all there SOOC):

Tulip

Still weeding through pics from a couple of months ago:

I'm a slacker mom

C has been home since May 2nd, and i have taken a total of 5 pictures of him :O These are from the zoo back on MAY 18th!!!

He is happy as a clam, busy as can be (is back working at Starbuck's, rehearsing for West Side Story, and interning at one of the theatres downtown) which is just the way he likes it.

He hated dorm food, and is the only freshman I know who LOST 15 pounds (literally) instead of gaining it. He's a little on the thin side, but he likes it and he looks good! Look at those wonderful crinkles near his eyes. Doesn't he look all grown up?

Not your typical Mt. Rainier picture

This is the real Mt. Rainier view from the Seattle to Bainbridge ferry as you come into Seattle. Just south of downtown is the industrial area where the container ships are loaded and unloaded. Usually you see Mt. Rainier with a beautiful foreground of downtown (which is typically shot from Queen Anne Hill), so I thought I'd give you all a different view:



ETA: this was taken with the 18-200 VR. And mom (Gemini :) ), the reason Mt. Rainier looks like it's RIGHT there is from using a long telephoto lens. It causes the background to compress, and therefore the things that are actually far away look closer.

I know I've been sort of missing in action....

With all the work we've been doing in the yard, I've hardly been online during the daytime, and by the time the evening rolls around I'm too pooped to edit pics. Plus, I haven't picked up my camera for a couple of weeks now :(

I took this one a few weeks ago when B and I escaped for the day to Bainbridge Island. It was a really nice and relaxing day! We wandered around Winslow for a bit, had lunch, then drove out and visited a few nurseries on the island. We showed great restraint and only came home with ONE plant that was not on our landscape plan (a very cool Rush). I showed remarkable self-restraint! I love that B has been visiting nurseries with me lately, and that he voices his opinion on what is going in our yard. During our 19 1/2 years of marriage, he has pretty much left the garden to me (just weeding what I ask him to weed), so I am really enjoying his input and ideas!

This is from the ferry on the way home at about 4pm. I've got some other pics I really want to edit and get posted as well, but this is the only one I've played with so far. Colors and editing are pushed to the limit, and while I'd likely never print something that looked so crazy color-wise, it's fun to post here anyhow!

Oh, BTW, this is with my new 18-200 VR, one of the first pics I took with it. I had been wanting this lens as a "walk around" lens for a couple of years now (especially for vacations when I might not necessarily want to lug around 3 lens at a time), and finally did it. I had been debating the 70-200VR or this one, and after mulling it over continuously decided I wouldn't get enough use of the 70-200, and that I could continue to rent it when I needed it. Anyhow, while this lens is not astoundingly amazing, it IS a great lens and I am very happy with it thus far!

Tulips

This is from the tulip festival back in APRIL! I love how the growers will sometimes randomly place a contrasting tulip color in the rows of another color :)



Texture? Yes? No? Don't care either way?


1/1250 @ f/4.0

Is it August or what?

Seriously. the high temp here was 88 yesterday, and it's on it's way to being hotter today. Keep in mind that virtually nothing in Seattle is air conditioned, including our house :( This is too warm for me for sure! I feel bad for complaining though, typically the month of June is cool and rainy, so I AM happy that we're not having that weather for sure, but could someone please turn it down a few degrees?!?

These Magnolia pics are from the end of April when my friend Jen was here visiting from Alaska. I'm just getting to them now. I've been having fun lately really punching up color and stuff....but always wonder if it's too much?

Couldn't decide on one or two to post, so you get four :D

ETA: boy, now I am seeing come cyan in the last two, are you?







1/320 @ f/4.5 for the three photos above



1/250 @ f/5.6

Animals

Our zoo recently opened a brand new exhibit for the penguins. It is so much nicer than the old one, and they must be so much happier! I love that a lot of it is underwater, so you can see them swimming around and playing. Once again shot by Colin, if it hadn't been for his trigger finger we wouldn't have gotten any shots!

These guys were taking their turns diving in:



I felt fortunate that one of the lions was even partially visible. Usually it's like "REALLY? Lions live here? You'd never know!"



And, I have a secret to tell you. Sometimes people comment on what a beautiful garden we must have, and it makes me smile because, right now we have no garden whatsoever! A few weeks ago we demoed the entire yard and gave away almost every (icky builder cheapo) plant in the garden, installed set in sand pavers, "bluestone" stepping stones, and an arbor, and hand tilled the awful builder soil (aka junk filled with construction debris which we had to haul out) with yards and yards of the good stuff. TODAY our plants were delivered...YIPPEE! It'll probably take a while to get them all in the ground as there is some fence painting and stuff that I still need to get done as well. Anyhow, the point of this is to say that the majority of the plants you've seen posted since we moved last August are not ours! ;)

Backlit

Just getting to some tulip pictures from April and May. I hadn't backlit anything for a long time, and just wanted to play:

1/160s @ f/7.1