May Flowers

This week on I Heart Faces, there are no faces. Well, no human faces anyway. I guess flowers can have faces, if you think about it. It's a non-judged contest over there this week and it's about May flowers and instead of posting one picture, we're allowed to post as many as we want.

I went out on a walk this morning when I should have been working. I got about a block away and had passed so many pretty flowers that I turned around and went home and got my camera and took it on my walk with me. So all of these were taken this morning either along the way or in my next door neighbor's yard. It was so much fun to shoot something atypical for me.

 

 

 

This was one of the last of my neighbor's tulips - a few weeks ago she had scads of them. That's the only trouble with tulips, they don't last nearly long enough. Anyway, I was shooting this flower that grows along the brick wall against the back of their house and because my macro lens has such a shallow depth of field when I shoot this close, the brick wall was completely out of focus - EXCEPT for this little piece of brick wall that showed up in the water droplet magnifying glass!

How cool is that?!

(Click the photo to enlarge it and see the tiny bricks.)

 

Can you tell that I heart my macro lens?! Sheesh, I love that thing. I'd been wanting a macro for a while and didn't feel like I could justify/afford a new one. One day I took a look on ebay for one and immediately found this older 60mm macro from an impeccable seller. So I bought it for $93 from a guy in Israel who shipped it to me suspended in a mile of styrofoam and bubble wrap. It is so much fun, and is even a decent portrait lens.

And even though I've never been a flower photographer, I feel empowered by my macro and happy with my little garden of flower photos.

For lots more may flowers, head over to I Heart (flower) Faces and check them OUT.

I Heart Animals

There's a pet challenge this week over at I Heart Faces and I couldn't resist entering. The hard part was choosing a photo to enter. Between my own 10 animals and working at an animal sanctuary, I have quite a few pet photos to choose from. But then I remembered this photo that I took a few weeks ago, and it's one of my all time favs.

Through my work, I recently got to go to Montana to help with some rescued horses. The owner of the foster facility, Michael, had a really, really great Maine Coon cat. He was big and fearless and uber-friendly. And he loved his person. I felt very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time for this one:

Photography is SO MUCH FUN!

So my last post was about my I Heart Faces entry. It was fun to enter and fun to look at the other entries and their blogs and appreciate all the talent and creativity out there. I never expected to win anything, but I liked the subject for this week's challenge - hearts - and was just excited to participate. I entered on Monday and all week I kept checking back in and looking at the other entries, but because I so wasn't planning on winning anything, I didn't check back in on Saturday morning when they announce the winners. My good friend Nan had to call me and tell me that I'd gotten 8th place!

So here's the photo, if you haven't seen it before. And this is what the judges, the fabulous Bobbi+Mike said about my photo, "beautiful color, nice use of a natural prop. simple and not contrived."

Thanks to everyone and their nice comments! I feel re-inspired by all the gorgeous photos I saw this week. And all the beautiful faces.

I Really Do Heart Faces

For quite a while, I've been following a cool blog called I Heart Faces. They have a weekly photo challenge, and I've been tempted to enter it more than once, but just never took the time to figure out how to enter before. The challenge this week is "hearts", so I went out yesterday and took a bunch of heart photos of my lovely live in model. And they turned out pretty nice, but I just kept thinking about this photo that I took in the fall. It has an accidental heart in it and that just felt like more fun.

 

Anyway, so here it is, my first attempt at I Heart Faces. It's kinda fun to finally participate. I love looking at the other entries, head on over there and check 'em out!

Jumpin' Back In

 Man, I've been so bad about keeping up with this blog lately! I guess that wicked busy fall and Christmas season kinda wore me out on blogging, photography, scrapbooking, or anything like unto it. I've had a nice long lull the last few weeks, but it's definitely time to jump back in. My good friend Kori had a baby a couple of weeks ago and I got to go take his pictures. Such a cutie, and such a good, good baby.

 

I got to try out my new Tai Pan Trading pot - in't it pretty? And the baby's not bad either....

Anything we did to him, he just slept through it.

So it was fun to play with a newborn again and I have 3 more sessions scheduled over the next week. Now if I can just keep blogging 'em.