My Goldfish

Not an actual goldfish, but my daughter moved from her infant/toddler swim class to the Goldfish class. She starts on Monday. I'm thrilled. Naturally I have no photos of her swimming today because I was swimming with her. Either way, we went to the Davis Arboretum and took pictures for a couple of hours afterwards.

I would love to take a family there for pictures. It's a beautiful place especially in the spring. It should be in bloom for the next few weeks.

Flowers Bright, Flowers at Night

I have loved flowers as subjects for many years. They sit quietly and have numerous details; their texture, color, the very center of them...I could go on but I won't. One thing I have not done is photograph flowers at night. Last night I walked out of a meeting with Daisy to let her run off a little steam (sitting through meetings is hard for a two-year old) and I saw these trees illuminated at the top by a parking lot light and growing darker as it went down. Now the first couple of shots were when the sun was set but some light remained. My camera slowed it's shutter speed and you can barely tell it's not daylight.

In the last two, it's much more obvious it's night. I just love the way the street lights played on the tops of the trees.

I need more practice and a tripod to make these shots clearer but it's not bad for a first try.

SOOC Sunday: Flowers

It's SOOC (straight out of the camera) Sunday! Today's subject: Flowers.

I took some photos before church today. Poppies are popping (pun fully intended) up all over the place around here right now.

Here's what it looks like now with a bit of editing. Some cropping and color adjustment:

Much better. 195mm, 125ISO, f2.8.

Accidental Perfection

Picture this (no pun intended): I get a new lens, a new toy if you will. It's raining (bummer!) and while the lens is hardy, it still makes me very nervous to take it out to play with it. Finally, the sun clears the clouds and I immediately run out to play. I see one of our daffodils has popped out of the ground and I immediately go to snap a picture of it:

Then I think, if I could get a bit lower, I could see inside of that flower. Not wanting to get dirty, I resorted to an old photo trick, lower the camera, point, shoot, and hope for the best. I got something I didn't even know I wanted. Perfect. Accidental. Like...Teflon. If only this accident made me a few million bucks.

What I love about this is the contrast of the dark brown bark against the bright green spring grass. I also love the hint of the rain droplets in the background and how sharp the foreground is while the background has a nice bokeh about it.

- FFR