I read the challenge, and I told myself that "Still Life" really isn't what I've been into. Then, leave it to Sharon (my other half) to say "what do you mean"?!?  You have a ton of this stuff! Of course, she was right. Some I've even taken for other stuff in here, but not used. So, this is my little shot at it.

Have FUN!

Wishing you all  a very Happy Valentine's Day 2010 ...  This is the weekend for romance... Go for it!!!!!!!!

 A Rose for you       Blessings, Ms judi

As stated yesterday... shots in color coming to a post near you:

1     2     3     4    5

Last night while chasing the sunset i captured this Wisconsin  corn field catching the evening rays.....

thinking >   Pink      ( this macro  inspired by our Ms Faerie)  :)

blessings, Ms Judi 

Another set from tuesday night.  And please, all you "Nature's better in color" people... don't get your panties in a wad.  I have shots in color coming to post near you.

1          2             3

Some more extension tube shots... Not sure if these are better or worse than yesterday.  I'll try and reshoot the flowers with some artificial light.  I was using very limited natural light coming through the window on a cloudy day.  I wanted to close down for more DOF on some of these (more so on yesterday's post), but even at ISO 800 and at f4 and f2.8 I never had a shutterspeed above 1/30".  I did find out yesterday that you guys didn't have any qualms over most of the compositions, just DOF.  Let me know if these are the same or if I should try something different altogether with these carnations.

1             2             3

Thanks for looking, thanks for commenting and have a great day!

Something to smile about, my  Mellow Yellow ( macro)  gift  from my neighbor

and my  New hat      from my son thomas in New York..

Dreaming  of  Spring     

 and another summer  of Doug fishing for   > Catfish 

Wishing  you all a great weekend ahead .  blessings, Ms Judi  :) 

Last week I went over to the flower garden.  Before photographing the whale, I spent some time in their conservatory clicking away at some flowers.  There were some yellow flowers and some blue flowers. As you can see by the thumb, there were some red, also.  The red didn't turn out so good.  While there, I was able to capture (on memory card) a crocodile.

Here's a complete shot of the background I was using.

A taste of spring.

01 thumbnail
    02  yellow
        03  inside

I've been watching these flowers all summer, and into the fall, wondering how they will look in the winter.
I do believe they'll keep blooming all winter long.

Flower #1

Flower #2

... still trying to get motion pics.  But do have

shallow DOF -->  Rose

and sharp DOF -->  Path

My photo session yielded one picture, for all my work, I hope you enjoy it.

PS, it is easier to give motivational speeches then to get motivated.

I really need to get out photograph my sunflowers some more but I've been so busy for the past two weeks.  Maybe I'll get lucky (and motivated) and wake up at a decent hour to get shots of them.  But until then, these will have to do.

1      2      3      4

Let me know what you think so that if I get out this weekend I'll have something to think about while shooting. 
Thanks for looking!

Edit:  Since everyone likes the thumb, here ya go.

Sure, after I post the park pics the challenge becomes nature. Nevertheless, this morning I took up my camera and headed outside; rumor has it that's where nature can most likely be found. I did the stalk-the-yard thing for a while, taking pictures here and there, scaring the bejeez&s outta our neighbors again, when they didn't see me stalking the lone wild strawberry in our yard over by the wood fence, hee hee hahaha!!! (Hubby wasn't home, and our yard was the most natural I could get this morning, you see) So I found a few interesting items, including a slight growthy of something in the bark of one of our trees that looks to me like an open-winged bat. Then again, I could just be thinking of Halloween waaay early...hmmn. Anyhoo, here are the first three. Comments and critiques are most welcome, and thank you for looking. :)

seedy    growthy in bark   blue flower

Well, as I said in the previous story this particular park, Cox Arboretum, was within an easy driving distance for me to go and practice my photography at.  One thing that draws me here is the multitude and variety of flowers that are on display here.

 Yellow flowers on black background

 Red Flowers  Red Flower in Focus

 yellowFlowers.jpg   Caterpillar  

Bee Flying Away   beeAndFlower.jpg  

Around the time I took these photos, I learned how to use PS to focus on what I wanted and I think it helped some of these photos become much more than they originally were since some, like yellowFlowers, were to noisy around my focus.  The yellow flowers on black background is an as-is photo, somehow when I took the picture the background blacked out.  Someone explained it to me long ago, but I can't remember nor could I reproduce a shot like that if I tried.

Edit to original story:

I wanted to show the original photo for the glass ware with the black background to show how...unattractive I think the original photo was as well as try George's suggestion about working with the transparency on the color spotting with the orange flowers.  Took me an hour to reproduce the image since I didn't have a copy of the photoshop version with the layers and color, and some more time to search the help files to figure out how to make a layer transparent.  Overall, I will definitely agree that when I'm not trying to drown out excessive "noise" as I did with the yellowFlowers.jpg, a softer effect with playing with transparency seems to work.  Results are below, enjoy and critique!

 Transparency of 15% for flowers.

 Transparency of 25% for flowers.

 Original glass with grass background and not cropped.

Desert Rose from my yard...

bud

flower

cropcropped

Have a great day......

Out and about in the garden again and I decided to take a few shots of the many zinnias we have growing.  But I can't decide which side is better!

Back or Front....  Back or Front.... Back....