Spring growth

New maple leaves:

Ash leaves (photo taken a week later than the above ones):

Camera setting differences

I thought I'd show you an example of what happens when I don't check my camera settings before taking a shot. Sometimes when I take photos in the house, I have to set it to let in more light, for obvious reasons, and I try to remember to set it back to something a little more normal afterwards in case I need to grab it for a for a quick shot elsewhere.

Sometimes I forget.

This first picture is an example of one of those times. It has way too much light, although it appears Blogger tried to adjust it for me (thanks, Blogger - NOT!), because my original really looked worse than this:

A bit of adjustment... still too much light:

Oops! A bit too dark:

There... this is about right:

Just for fun, let's zoom in to the pretty new growth for the contrast with the evergreen trees in the background:

There's always something new to learn or experiment with. That reminds me, I still haven't started that Advanced DSLR class I bought over a year ago! Good thing it never expires!

Fall foliage, part 3

Autumn is on the wane, folks. The weather's been grand (but is now getting colder), the colors have been spectacular (but have now mostly turned to brown), and we couldn't have asked for a lovelier season. It's hard to let go of it, but let go we must. I still have all my gorgeous photos to look at whenever I want to, though, and I thought I'd share one last round of them for you to enjoy, too. Here ya go!

The reds are my favorites, but the golds were awesome, too!

Here's one of my favorite photos of them all, just because of its simplicity, I guess.

I hope you enjoyed the "tour". Beware of a lot of white pics ahead... likely sooner than we want. Bah. ;)

Shooting a leaf

Have you ever tried to photograph a single falling leaf? I did. It's quite a challenge, because you never quite know where to focus. It's kind of a guessing game. Here are some of my results. This first photo shows a stop-motion shot of the leaves dropping (mainly on the left half of the pic). The wind was blowing, and the leaves were falling like crazy.

Here are some shots of single leaves:

The following three shots are all of the same leaf. I took more pics of the same leaf, but these were the only ones focused very well.

It was fun, and good practice.

Fall foliage, part 2

Here are some more shots from my fall colors photo shoot last week. Enjoy!

Which are your favorites - the reds or the golds?

Fall foliage, part 1

Here are 3 more shots from my fall colors photo shoot Wednesday morning. I'm sewing a project with a tight deadline, so have to be quick here.

Such amazing colors! And it was a good thing I took the pics when I did. The winds we had yesterday surely sent the leaves flying!

To be continued.....

It's that time of year

Brrr... it's cold! And windy! And the forecast is for a freeze tonight. We know what's coming......

Morning macros

It's such a beautiful morning today, which seems to be rare these days, so I just had to take the camera out for a little play practice time. It's been unusually cold, for the most part, so spring has progressed slowly. The trees are only beginning to leaf out.

Here are some pretty macro (very close up) shots of those same leaves:

A good thing about the chilly temps is that the tulips have lasted much longer than usual. They're still blooming, although nearing the end.

The violas are getting thicker...

And of course the dandelions are popping up all over.

I've mowed once, and thanks to recent rains, need to again very soon. Miss C comes again today after school, and we need to finish our 'project' from yesterday, which I'll show you soon. I've also cut out another small sewing project. So I've been busy. I haven't planted any garden yet, but that'll need to happen soon, too.

More fall prettiness

Again, these are week+-old photos. So the trees are really looking pretty bare by now. But that's why we take pics... to preserve what we like to look at, right? This is what I saw on October 1st. We don't have anything that gets very red on our farm, but this year the green/gold combinations were lovely!

Look at how the leaves had fallen straight down in the pic below. That's rare around these parts. 

Of course by now they've blown all over the place, first from one direction and then the other. This was pretty while it lasted, though.

The asparagus has some lovely green/gold coloring, too. You can see a bit of it in the upper right corner of the photo above. Even my hostas got colorful. They also look pretty sad, though, because of the dry year. It's a good thing they're tough, because I didn't water them at all.

Remember the tree that got broken down because of the ice on it last winter? Here's what it looks like now (when I took the picture, that is):

Rather an odd shape, but its colors this year were probably the best it's ever had.

Below is the top of the maple tree a bit later. The wind was just beginning to pick up.

Now do you want to see something REALLY cool? My friend, LiEr, has been at a new project for quite some time. It's finally done. It's made out of wood. It's AWESOME! Go check out her little bake shop here! Her creativity blows me away!