Summer Morning

Today’s theme, for Summer Day 5, is “Appreciating Morning”. I’m generally the first one up in my house, and I have come to appreciate that morning time as my quiet time to myself. When in school, I was up each school day at 5:45 am. Now that I can get up when I feel like it, I am still usually up no later than 7:00. Today was a gloriously beautiful morning – about 70 degrees and a cloudless sky -and my deck was just begging me to head outside with a cup of coffee, so I did.

While I soaked up some vitamin D and enjoyed my java, I took notice of the pretty light and that the flower containers I planted this year were actually looking pretty nice.

I even liked the way my newly painted purple toenails looked in the morning light!

A Piece of my Heart

Each year when I return home from our vacation in Maine, I feel as though I’ve left a little piece of my heart behind.

After this year’s long and unusually traffic-filled ride, I took that much more pleasure in filling my lungs with the salty air and letting my soul settle in to the place where it feels so at home.

The colors of the evening never failed to disappoint…

And the morning light sparkled on the water like diamonds.

Although Maine is far from the tropics, when I put my head on the pillow at night I’d see this pine tree out the bedroom window that for some reason made me think of tropical breezes and palm trees lulling me to sleep.

To avoid overloading you with photos in one post, I will continue with another post this week showing some of my Maine “discoveries”.

Best of, Part 4

I’ve been trying to neatly package this set of photos with a category name like the last three, but the best name has been eluding me.  “Fire and Rain” came to mind if you, darling readers, are willing to accept a little stretch.  “Light” was another thought I had, but then I started thinking, well, isn’t that really the essence of photography?  On the other hand, each photo in this group does showcase light in a different way, so we’ll go with that, okay?

As those of you who’ve been with me for a while may remember, I’ve been chasing a gorgeous moon shot for a long time.  I shivered in the cold try to do justice to “supermoon” and lamented my bad luck at missing a beautiful shot on Cape Cod.  Just a couple days ago I was out trying yet again.  My favorite photo of the moon that I’ve achieved so far would be this one from my vacation in Maine in August:

One thing I plan to do in 2012 is pay more attention to the cycle of the moon and try to get out the night before as Scott has suggested.

On this same vacation, I did something I’ve never done before.  I got out of bed before sunrise and took pictures.  Plenty of times  I’ve awakened, looked out the window and thought, “how lovely.. I should take a picture” and then promptly gone back to sleep.  This year I hauled myself out to the beach with my camera and waited.  I was rewarded:

Sun and water on my vacation makes a nice segue into my next photo, the beautiful rainbow over Stage Island, one of the group of small islands you can see in many of my vacation photos.

And speaking of rain (you need rain to get a rainbow, right?) I found this curious formation of rain drops on grape leaves at home this summer:

Moving away from the rain and back into the light, two holidays provided me with two fun lessons about using my camera.  Last December I discovered the “star” effect of a long shutter speed and tiny aperture on Christmas lights. I was delighted:

After consulting several photographer-bloggers (thank you, Scott, for your helpful hints!), I purchased a shutter-release remote and using the “bulb” setting on my camera for the first time,  went out to shoot fireworks in July:

It has been such a wonderful year of learning about my camera and how to use it – and I have many of you to thank for it!  Thank you to every one who has offered a tip or made a beautiful photograph and gone on to explain how you did it.  I appreciate it all.

I was trying to decide whether this would be my last post in this series or if I would have one more.  The subject matter is very dear to my heart, but my concern was that others would not find it to be as compelling of a subject as I do.  After reading a couple of persuasive blog posts (I’ll share the links to those in my next post), I’ve decided I will share one more.  Perhaps the subject matter won’t be a surprise to you.  Come on back tomorrow to see what I am talking about!

This was part four in my submission to Scott Thomas’s photo assignment #16.

Morning and Afternoon

Blooms are busting out again here in my little corner of suburbia, and I thought I’d share them with you in a slightly different way.  I took some of these pictures around 5:00 in the afternoon yesterday and some of them this morning around 9:00.  I was curious to see how the light at different times of the day affected the color and look of the blooms.

It is turning out to be a banner year for hydrangea (Yay!!!!!).  I have two different varieties planted in my yard – forgive me for not knowing the names.

Purple hydrangea, 5pm

Purple hydrangea, 9 am.

Blue hydrangea, 5pm

 

Blue hydrangea, 9 am

Bee balm, 5pm

Bee balm, 9 am

Any thoughts on which you like better?  I think the morning light shows a “truer” view of the color.  I didn’t retouch any of these shots – all SOOC.

While I was playing, I tried the nifty-fifty on a few shots:

Hydrangea again – f4.5 with 50mm lens

Fuchsia – f3.2 with 50 mm

I mentioned in my Fireworks post, that I purchased a shutter release cable.  That seemed like a good excuse to bring the extension tubes out to play, no?

just-opening hydrangea with extension tubes

Bee balm with extension tubes – kind of alienlike isn’t it?  Maybe it is really a triffid, Gerry!

Oh!  And it is assignment time over at Scott’s place again!  Click here to read about this month’s challenge to show scale (no not slimy alien scale! 😉 ) in your photos.

Pleased as Punch

I know I said I wasn’t going to blog again before the weekend was over, but as I turned down my street last evening, I was taken with the color of the sky.  I decided I wanted to get outside and try to capture it.  My nifty-fifty did a nice job of recording just how the sky looked:

That’s SOOC.  Since the light was so beautiful, I decided to poke around the yard for signs of spring.  I found one that really pleased me.  I was going to save this for my photo hunt, but it was just so pretty and I was so happy with how it came out, I just had to share:

I normally don’t like to toot my own horn, but I just love this picture.  It was mostly a happy accident.  I was, as I said, poking for signs of spring when I noticed the lilac buds had turned purple.  I was having issues focusing on these sweet little buds, so I decided to grab my tripod to see if I could get a sharp picture in the fading light.  As I moved the lens around looking for a pretty angle, I caught sight of the lovely orangy-pinky glow of the fading sun behind this bud.  Auto-focus was arguing with me again, probably due to all the greenery around, so I took my chances with manual focus.

Settings for those who like that info: 1/25, f5.6, ISO 800, 250mm focal length, 0 EV.

Keep It Simple – Picture Fall, day 8

Sorry about moodiness of yesterday’s post.  I’m better today, over my frustration.  I got to take today’s picture outside in sunlight, which makes me happy.

Studying light was the main gist of today’s prompt.  As photographers, we are always interested in the light, and I suspect that many of you, like me, even have a favorite time of day for light.  The time for mine varies with the season of course, but I love that late day glow, an hour or two before the sun sets.  I was determined to get outside today and spend some time on today’s prompt.  We were instructed to find a single object that interested us and use the light around us to illuminate it.  My object is actually a planter ornament that my sister gave to me for a gift one year.  The ball is filled with a material that glows in the dark, so I thought it might make for some interesting daytime illumination too.  I used some techniques I’ve picked up recently (mostly from Scott Thomas) including  sidelighting to bring out the detail of the ladybug sculpture, using a flat, silver surface to reflect more light and a large aperture to focus on my object and create a bit of background bokeh.