Bling

Solar lights on the deck umbrella. And on top of the umbrella, those long stringy things that are falling out of the trees right now.

Morning has Broken

It is a crisp May morning, 40 some degrees and the sun is just hitting our cul-de-sac at the bottom of a wooded hill. This rhododendron(?) is beginning to emerge, and soon its red cousin will follow. The fully bloomed flower on the left is blurrier than I would like, but I am happy with the crispness of the rear two buds. I'm trying not to overthink the photographing and just get one on the blog every day. So, for today, rhododendron.

Buds

I don't know what these buds are. They are on a bush in our side yard. These flowers bloomed into fragrant, white droplets. Anyone know what they are?

I like how fuzzy the background is. I know it has something to do with focal length (long) and aperture (large) but don't have the logic figured out yet.

More. That's how people learn.

Good Evening Trees

I am finding it nearly impossible to capture the way the sun bathes the trees as it sets. I'll give you this for now and keep trying. Maybe it can't be photographed?

Spring-ish Strip

When I crop in Picasa, it suggests three options or lets me pick my own. Today, it gave be the photo above. There is nothing spectacular about this photo, or the larger photo from which it came, but it struck me nonetheless because of how one photo divided into so many vertical pieces. The birdhouse, the big tree, tire swing, fence posts, small trees. I would not in a million years have cropped this photo this way myself and I don't know why Picasa did it, but I am grateful.

Backyard Hawk

Thankful for already having the telephoto on the camera. I need to look this guy up in my many guides to eastern birds. He is clearly a hawk, but I don't know what kind. He is sitting on our bird feeder and seemed to enjoy posing for me.

Update: pretty sure this is an adult male Cooper's Hawk

Dinner is Served

I love taking pictures of food. Tonight I made my mom's favorite chicken and biscuits as well as trying to bring the flavor of summer with tomatoes, basil and fresh mozzarella with EVOO and balsamic vinegar. One of my kids ate only biscuits and mozzarella. I took a picture of that and it was so unappetizing, I couldn't post it. Tim and I enjoyed the meal together, and it did taste like winter might come to an end.

Something to Play With

A friend from the past mailed me this beautiful gift last weekend. She is a fiber artist (and clearly a good one...) and when she heard that I was interested in knitting and felting, she said she would send me some fiber "to play with." I couldn't believe the beauty and the quantity of her gift! So now I am mulling over ideas for ways to use this amazing material and finding a whole new realm of creativity opening up for me. Should I knit? Felt? Weave? Any ideas you want to share?

Ginger Snap

This is Ginger Snap.  In the first photo, she gets her first glimpse at her new home.  In the second, she is hiding under a chair for the foreseeable future.  Her foster dad said that she did this for about two days and then started hanging out with the people in the house, sitting with them, following them around and such.  House feels like a home again.

Basmati Rice Pudding

I enjoy taking pictures of food, especially food I have cooked. A good photograph evokes a memory or an emotion or both, and I have found that food pictures often can almost tell the whole story of a vacation or event. "Eew, there is that awful pizza from Sea World; remember..." or "That rice pudding was so good that we ate it for lunch. Cooking it saved us from the boredom of the third snow day in a row..."  And it was mighty tasty.

Happy Mardi Gras. Or Epiphany. Or Something.

King Cake from Great Harvest Bread Company in Herndon. Our little early Mardi Gras. Tim got the baby. I got it last year.  I had to Google to find out what the baby means, I think the most logical answer is that the person who gets the baby has to bring the cake to the next party.  Although I would like Tim to have good luck.

Deer Infestation

So I don't love any of these photos.  The deer were in the neighbor's backyard and quite aways away and there were many obstacles in the way that made focusing the lens hard.  That and I was trying to lean against a tree.  But there were at least six deer out there, and I had just been thinking that I hadn't seen deer in a while.  My favorite thing about these photos is that in the third picture, I was trying to focus on the two deer on the left, and it wasn't until I reviewed the photos on my computer that I noticed their friend to the right.  I will have lots of opportunities to get good at photographing deer.