Week 36 in Pictures

I'm a little late posting my weekly photos.  I could tell you a hundred thousand reasons why, but I'm tired and really want to go to bed now, so I'll just post them.  :)

{Sunday}

I have no idea what these berries are, or if they are even berries, but I was intrigued by them.

{Monday}

Our tradition of going to the Labor Day parade then hanging out at my in-laws didn't happen this year.  The parade was moved to Sunday (no idea why), so we just stayed close to home, except for a ride on the bike trail where we came across this cat.  Turns out she was a mama feeding her kittens and wasn't too happy about me bothering her.  So I just snapped a few photos (with my telephoto lens) and left her alone.

{Tuesday}

I won this basket at our Bible study kickoff party this morning!

{Wednesday}

Nick and I walked down the road to gather milkweed leaves for our hungry Monarch caterpillars and happened upon this handsome fella.  He was newly emerged from his chrysalis so we brought him home to hang out with us for a while.  Alex was having fun with him crawling all over him.

{Thursday}

This beautiful lady has a sad story.  She emerged while I was gone for the day.  I set her free as soon as I got home and she flew over to rest on my snowball bush where I took a few photos of her.  When the boys got home from school, she tried to fly across the road and got caught up in the draft from the cars going by and got hit by a car right in front of us.  I wanted to cry!

{Friday}

These Monarchs all have happier endings!  We had a female and two males emerge today.  The female joined us in the morning while I was still home.  Thankfully I still had one little bloom on my butterfly bush to put her on.  The males came later so I took the containers they were in to my friend, Laura's.  She chuckled when I walked in the door and announced, "We're expecting!"  :)  I placed them both on her Morning Glories.

{Saturday}

Nick was so excited to catch this frog.  Even if only for a moment.

Have a great week!

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Scavenger Hunt Sunday 02.05.12

Time for another Scavenger Hunt Sunday!  

This week's items are: Strike a pose, Footwear, Hobby, Shiny, and Color me green.  And here are my interpretations ...

{strike a pose}

When I asked Alex to pose for me, he got all silly, as usual.  I don't really know what he's doing in this picture, but I just can't resist that sweet face.  Even if it is slightly off focus.  :)

{footwear}

Alex in his snow boots and me in my sneakers ... how you'll usually find us when we are outside.

{hobby}

Photography is still my main hobby and it takes me into some pretty precarious places at times ... like in the middle of these thorny bushes in order to get a shot of these berries.  :)

{shiny}

My gold-dipped rose is pretty shiny when the sun is shining on it.  I liked this out of focus shot ... probably because of all the bokeh.  :)

{color me green}

The other day Keira had this necklace on that she had made with her beads.  I loved the shades of green and blue.  I also love the face that she almost always includes her cross on her necklaces.


I felt a little off my game this week.  Probably because the Great Kitchen Remodel has me busy with other things.  Hoping to do better next week with these prompts ...

1. Facial Feature (Sacha's suggestion)
2. Shadow (Sacha's suggestion)
3. Spicy (Kat's suggestion)
4. Gold (Kat's suggestion)
5. Fabric (Christian's suggestion)

Make sure you head over to Ashley's to check out some more great Scavenger Hunt photos!
Have a great week!

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Week 51 Summary

Only one more week of 2011 Project 365 to go!  Sarah and Tracey are both changing things up for 2012, so I might keep going and do a third year.  It may not include a photo each and every day, but I do intend to keep taking photos and gaining knowledge.  So why not post some once a week, right?  Next week will be the last week for this type of collage post though.

Anyway, this is what last week looked like in pictures ...

18 - "Half" prompt from Scavenger Hunt Sunday

19 - Berries in snow

20 - Got a new lens so I had to play!

21 - Keira asked me to make her a bow for her hair

22 - Alex at Kindergarten's ice cream party

24 - The kids after Christmas Eve service at our church

23 - Candy canes

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

     

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Photo of the Day: December 19

We got about 1/2 inch of snow yesterday - just enough to cover up the yucky brown.  Today it warmed up and rained.  Doesn't look good for a white Christmas.

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Week 45 Summary

Another mixed up collage after another crazy, busy week!

8 - Election day

7 - Sweet, curious pony

9 - New-to-us car

10 - Early morning visitor

11 - Parade loot

6 - Macro berries

12 - Proud Bible Quizzers

   

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Macro ... Edited

Welcome back to the edit version of Shoot & Edit/Good to WOW!  Thank you all for your sweet comments you left on Monday's SOOC post!  You are all very generous with your kind words and I am honored and humbled by each and every one!


To answer a couple questions I received ... no, I don't typically use a tripod when taking macro photos.  I manually focus and then move my camera around until I get the focus I want, so a tripod just wouldn't work.  :)  And the macro filters I got were very inexpensive ones I found on Amazon.  They are a set of 4 for about $12.  Much more affordable than a macro lens, although I have one on my Christmas list.  :)

I was pretty pleased with my SOOC shots so I didn't do too much as far as editing goes with them.  Just a few tweaks in ACR then some sharpening, unless specified otherwise.  Although for a few I wanted to get a little creative, so I played around with some actions, frames, and textures.

{mouse over to see sooc}

I added a couple Kim Klassen textures to this one ... Aurora and Sweettart ... both at 50% then painted off the focal point at 30%.

{mouse over to see sooc}

For the above photo, I also corrected the white balance.  The SOOC looked a little green/blue to me.

Then I used Katie Lloyd's Vintage Polaroid frame.

Very slight adjustments done to the berry photo.  I loved the SOOC.

For the gerber daisy, after the adjustments in ACR, I ran Pioneer Woman's Lovely action.

I did very little editing to the corn tassel photo.  I really liked how it turned out sooc.  

Make sure you head over to Ashley's to see more great macro photos!




Also linking up with:



          

One more thing that I am super excited about ... the photo of the paddle boarder that is in my header and won the Favorite Photo for October contest on Through a Photographer's Eyes was selected as the winner in a local contest I entered!!!  I received an email this afternoon.  I will receive a monetary prize and have my photo featured in our county's 2012 Visitor's Guide!  Isn't that cool?!?!


Hope you are all having a spectacular Thursday!  The kids had a half day of school today and have tomorrow off, so we're hoping for a fun, relaxing weekend.

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Photo of the Day: November 6

ISO 400, f/11, 1/125s, 18-55mm lens on Nikon D3100 w/10x macro filter

While exploring the outdoors today searching for something to shoot for tomorrow's Shoot & Edit/Good to WOW macro theme, I came across these red berries.  I love the colorful background (NOT an added texture!).  :)

     
Linking up with Lisa's Chaos for Macro Monday and Sara for Sweet Little Photo Swap.
Also, I'm calling this my favorite photo for the week.  :)

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