I think that at least a couple of these pictures were taken by Carla as you can see her reflection in the bank window.
Also, if anybody was curious what my patio chairs looked like when they were in good shape (or before the shabby chic look), you will find them in 1 of these pictures as well.
Seems like most of my folders have a subfolder named New Folder. This New Folder contains some pretty random pictures. Some of these were taken by Carla.
This week’s folder:
Backup/Old My Pictures/New Folder
Next week’s folder will be:
Backup/Old My Pictures/New Photos
There are 3 very special people that were born on July 12 and they are each worthy of their own individual birthday photo tribute. So I will start from youngest and go to oldest.
Here is my photo birthday tribute to Logan:
There can be no doubt that there are certain subjects that I photograph for certain people. For example, I photograph tulips and roses for my Mom. I photograph daisies and lilies for Jill. (A fact that lead to a rather embarrassing phone call recently that the story of which, may or may not be revealed in the next month or so.) I photograph dark alleys for Sara.
But irises? I definitely photograph irises for Jen. That shows what a deep level of friendship Jen and I have, because I HATE irises.
I know that sounds harsh. How can anybody hate a flower? After all, didn’t Henry Beecher put it best when he wrote:
“Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.”
But irises confound me for two reasons. They bloom and are gone in what feels like 45 seconds.
Second, I have never been able to figure out how to photograph irises. They are all weird angles and they never seem to reveal their best parts for the photographing.
They aren’t like daisies or roses or (my personal favorite) moonflowers (although I also like marigolds, hollyhocks, coneflowers, dahlias…) that seem to be saying, “Come photograph me!”
They seem to be saying, “Try and photograph this!”
I made a solemn vow this year that the iris was not going to get the best of me. But even after two separate trips to photograph an iris patch, I wasn’t convinced that I had captured anything that was worth looking at.
I even put off editing the pictures for close to 5 weeks.
However, after editing the images I feel that I have captured something of quality. It wasn’t an easy dance like it is with the tulip or the hollyhock, but we got to the right place in the end.
Here are more pictures from the Mad with Joy Series.
So one of these iris pictures will end up as Jen’s birthday present. Jen’s birthday was week ago and I have yet to decide which one to give her. There will be more pictures published on Saturday (at the usual time), you can help pick out Jen’s birthday present by voting on which one you think is the best in the comments section of this website. (If you vote on Facebook, I won’t count your vote.) Although be warned, if Jen votes, hers is the only vote that matters.
Stay tuned for more irises tomorrow.
The final pictures from the Plant Happiness Series.
The last few pictures were taken of the lilies I purchased and planted in my lily patch when I got home from the excursion with my Mom. The very last picture is of an an archaic creature that can no longer be found in my lawn.
More pictures from my trip to the Northwest Greenhouse with my Mom.
The Plant Happiness Series comes from a trip I made to the Northwest Greenhouse with my Mom. Here are more pictures from the series:
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More pictures from the Plant Happiness Series tomorrow.
Looks like the Random Weekly Photo Experiment has run its course as submissions are starting to become few and far between. Looks like I need to start thinking about what it is I’m going to post on Mondays next year.
Here are the submissions for SHADOWS:
Christopher D. Bennett
The theme for next week:
A look back at last year’s DEPTH OF FIELD submissions:
Forgot what DEPTH OF FIELD is? Here is a refresher:
Depth of field (DOF) is the portion of a scene that appears acceptably sharp in the image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions.
Depth of Field is controlled by the size of the aperture used to take a picture. The larger the aperture, the smaller the Depth of Field. The smaller the aperture, the larger the Depth of Field. If you want only one item in a picture to be in focus, then you use a large aperture. If you want almost the whole picture to be in focus, then you use a small aperture.
One thing to note about aperture sizes, the larger the number, the smaller the aperture. f/1.4 is much larger than f/32.
Perhaps you don’t know how to control the size of the aperture on your camera. You can still fake it. Almost all cameras have “Creative Control” settings. If you set your camera on “Portrait”, almost always symbolized by a sideways icon of a woman’s face, then the camera will use exposure settings with the largest aperture possible. If you set your camera to “Landscape” almost always symbolized by a mountain icon, the camera will use exposure settings with the smallest aperture possible.
DEPTH OF FIELD is usually meant to describe a picture taken with a large aperture to separate the subject of a picture from its background.
Remember: Submissions are due to bennett@photography139.com by noon on Monday.
I’d say good luck, but it would seem somewhat pointless.
The rest of the tulip pictures from my trip to Pella with my Mom.
Next week’s Personal Photo Project involves the final piece or the endgame of the 9 Emotions Project.
More pictures of tulips from my trip to Pella with my Mom.
More from the Still Laughing Series tomorrow.
