Learning New Things

I'm slowly learning the graphics program called paint.net. It's a free graphics program that can be downloaded at www.paint.net

I have to admit that I'm very much a naturalist when it comes to my photography. I guess I feel like it's cheating. I need to work at getting the best picture while I'm doing it; not later.

At dinner this weekend, my husband mentioned that several on my floral photos would look really cool if I made the background black and white and left the flower in color. Since it's colder out this month than it was in January, it seemed like a good project to work on to work on my graphics skills.

This yellow tulip picture is my first go at it. It was really fun to play with the picture and create a completely different piece of art from it. Working with the layer functionality this effect is actually pretty easy.

Look At the Butterfly (And Not How Long Since I Last Posted)

I can't believe I haven't posted since February. It's amazing how fast time flies while you're not updating your blog.

I think I'm mostly avoiding posting because I was really hoping that starting the blog would get me to take tons of pictures. Every time I think about posting, I realize that I haven't taken new photos in a really long time. I know that some of it is the weather. I love photographing outside. I've gotten some really great winter scenes, but I love photography in the summer (or spring and even fall...)

Although I'm bummed about not doing as much photographing that I would like, I do love looking through my archives to do an entry here. There picture was of the butterfly was taken in my yard this fall. Butterflies are always gorgeous. If the sit still long enough to be in a picture then the photo turns out awesome just because you caught a butterfly on film. Most of the pictures of this butterfly turned out blurring. I really like this one though.

It reminds me of a time I was talking to a coworker about my photography. She was admiring a picture I had on the calendar. I was talking about how many of the flower I actually took to get one photo that I felt was awesome. Some of that is experimenting. Some more of it is the fact that I've learned a lot about exposure, aperture, shutter speed, etc. It also show the patience for getting the shot of the moving butterfly.