My Dream Garden

In one word... JEALOUS.

These are a few - just a few - of the flowers that populate my in-laws' garden and yard. I've been working on incorporating bokeh into my photographs...playing with depth of field and composition. Floral photography is ideal for that experimentation. I had so much fun! Enjoy!!

A trip to Brookfield Zoo...

Although I like to take pictures of my kids at the zoo, just to document the day spent with the family, I can't help but try to take some nice photos of the animals. Its good practice for composition and dealing with unruly, uncooperative subjects... a lot like photographing a 3 or 4 year old!

So, today I kept my 28-75mm lens on the camera (as opposed to a longer zoom lens), but I got some nice, crisp shots of a couple different animals! Especially the penguins... my favorites!!!

Straight outta the camera... no time for edits.

I wanted to share some images from last night's visit to the park, but I didn't have time to edit anything. So, these are SOOC. I actually think the original images are pretty good. It was just before dusk, a cloudless night, and a beautiful location (Festival Park in Elgin). The girls weren't ultra cooperative, but I still got a few that I was happy with. This is definitely a location I'll return to (for fun AND for pictures!).

We didn't have our swimsuits with us, so I had to take pictures of random kids playing in the fountains. They sure looked like they were having fun and I was tempted to run through the water in my regular clothes!

Feeling better about things...

I didn't have some random realization of my greatness, but I did accomplish a few things in the hour or so since I last posted. For one, I finally figured out how to get the RAW images off my memory card. And then I fixed the white balance on several of them. Here is my favorite, taken of Bug...

Edited to reupload this image...to no avail. Does it look a tad pixelated to anyone else, or is it just me?! Trust me, the image on flickr looks FABULOUS!

I am also going to post some more photos that I wanted to add to the previous post. I guess, if nothing else, this doubt that is plaguing me will inspire me to work harder, practice more, and let household chores fall by the wayside while I spend an entire (beautiful!) Saturday on my computer. I so can't wait for my laptop to arrive so I can sit outside while my girls play and work on my photos.

Again, feel free to comment, CC, do whatever you can to let me know that someone reads my blog!