Pine Cones

I haven't gotten to do much photographing yet this break. The holiday season is keeping me on my toes. I received some amazing reference books for Christmas along with some lens filters from my husband. I need one extra part before I can give the new filters a shot, so I'm anxiously awaiting its arrival.

I love how the snow sticks to the needles in this pictures. If you look close enough each individual snowflake can be seen. This picture was taken in my front yard.

I'll be back to work in less than a week, and my parents should be on their way for my daughter's birthday.

Forgotten Beauty

I make the 2.5 hour trip to my parents across the plains of Wyoming a few times a year. I've lived here so long that the plains are, well quite plain to me. I often forget how beautiful they are to others that don't have to see them endlessly all the time.

I took this photo about a year ago because there was a rainbow covering the sky. By the time I decided to actually pull over and add a few minutes to the already long trip for the kids, the rainbow had faded a little bit.

As I was searching my archived pictures a few days ago, I came across this one. I remembered reading in so many other blogs about how wonderful the clouds are out on the plains and it hit me that other people find great beauty in the plains of Wyoming. So here it is, one of my hundreds of trips across the plains.

Winter on My Mind

With the cold weather and Christmas a few days away (I've been reminded that it's 4 days no less than 100 times today), the only pictures that I can bring myself to write about contain winter landscape.

I have to admit, I cheated a little on this winter scene. It's actually a spring storm, which is why the bright red road is warm enough to have the snow melted off of it.

I took so many pictures on this trip. There was just so much many scenes that looked amazing. The fog removing so much of the color and the snow doing the same thing. The whole area just looked amazing.

Test Pictures

We bought my daughter a pretty nice camera for Christmas. I was testing it tonight on the animals to see how it works. It is 10 mega pixels which is pretty amazing. Just few snap shots of the cat and dog and then I wrapped it up and put it under the tree.

I'm excited for her to get it. She mentioned she wanted her own camera earlier this year, but didn't ask for one for Christmas. She should be pretty surprised.

I made sure that it had some basic functionality (ability to set her own shutter speed along with aperture setting.) I doubt she'll use them at first, but I wanted to find a camera she could grow in to a little bit. I'm hoping to get someone to go out on photo shoots with me . It's be really nice to get her into my hobby as well. I know she'd be good at it and might even inspire me a little bit. Now I'm getting excited for Christmas too.

Blue

My sister-in-law had her wedding outside in the mountains. There was a gorgeous little pond that she said her vows by. While the reception was going I went over with my camera to get some pictures.

I decide to set the white balance to see what kind of colors I could get from the outdoor pictures. Setting the white balance to an indoor setting changed the pond to a deep blue. The raindrops on it just completely finished the effect.

Spring Surprises

When moved in to our current house in the fall. That spring was amazing. It was so awesome to see what flowers would come up in the yard. These yellow tulips were my favorite.

They were located under a bush; long forgotten my the previous owners I'm sure. The weren't like the tulips I'm used to seeing. I love their pointed edges.

The first spring we were in the house, I went out with my camera in the rain to get a picture of all the beautiful flowers I had inherited. Since it was hard to grow much of any thing at my old house, I loved photographing all the beautiful spring colors. The bright green that is spring along with the yellows and the pinks made for interesting compositions.

Awesome Concert

I have music on my mind right now. Between all the holiday music and last night's viola concert. My daughter did awesome; as did all the other kids. It's been tough keeping her interested in practicing all the time, but she keeps improving and the concert was great last night.

I thought it'd would be fun to photograph her viola and over expose the the picture and work with changing the lighting. I really like this picture and how it turned out. I used my purple curtains as a backdrop for the picture. The viola is sitting on two kitchen chairs.

I hope you're enjoying all the concerts of the season.

I'd Rather Be Shopping in Paris

My son had a birthday party to go to today, so we needed to go toy shopping. It's so exhausting to be out this time of year. So I'll think about walking the streets of Paris in the summer instead.

Paris has such great architecture. The beautiful pink flowers, or the flowers all over the city, make it so beautiful.

With such gorgeous surroundings there's nothing really hard about taking this picture. It was so amazing taking photos in Europe. I want to go back and take more photos (and avoid holiday shopping.)

Purple Flowers

Enough talk and pictures about snow. We've got at least 6 inches of snow. Instead of posted pictures of Christmas and snow, I'll post pictures of camping this summer. We went camping in Colorado this summer. I wanted to get pictures of moose. There weren't any moose to be found, but I didn't get some really awesome nature shots.

I enjoy changing the aperture setting to change blur the non-focal point. It's amazing what the background will become create when it's out of focus.

It was really cold when we went camping this year. I'm looking forward to going camping this next summer when it's warmer and I can go out and take pictures. I'm usually the first one up when we're camping and I can spend some time by myself doing some photography.

This photo can be found on a great ornament on my Cafepress site.

Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It's definitely Christmas at my house. I've just stuffed my Christmas cards. (I'm usually not this good at cards, but I moved two years ago and a coworker is still having to bring my mail in to me. It's about time I let people know I moved.) We also have the tree put up, lights outside, and kids that know to the minute when Santa is coming. I'm tired already.

The first year we were in this house (two years ago now...) we put these lights up outside.. It snowed on them and the effect was just amazing. Once again having the camera at the right time paid off. I think the hardest part of taking the picture was holding the camera still while I got the correct exposure. My husband got me a tripod for Christmas that year that would have come in handy. Besides the lights shining through the snow, I love how the icicles are hanging down as well. Enjoy the holidays and take wonderful pictures.