{ 040 } :: 325

Remember that bottle brush bloom I shared a few days ago?

This is another take on it.

It rained a lot today and during a moment of cease-fire I went out to my beloved bush to get some deliciously pink bokeh! 

I call this one Cotton Candy.

...fairly appropriate, no?

{PS - It's also in my Etsy shop! Just click on the photo or title above to go there.}

{ 008 } :: 325

Whew!

Day Eight was a close one.

I took some shots earlier in the day of my daughter's new-found rock collection { which has gorgeous colors and textures and will be photographed soon! }, but I wasn't totally happy with them so I decided to wait until my date with my husband to get the day's shot.

When we got back I didn't feel like editing, but it was truly taken on the seventeenth.
{ and I am back-dating this post....because I'm mildly OCD like that }

See that weird taillight in the bottom left corner?
It was some kind of sports car...a Corvette, if my { total lack of } car knowledge serves me well.

Rainy Night Lights

Last week we got a lot of rain.
It precipitated in one fashion or another for well over 24 solid hours.
Which made our drive at night very beautiful!



I was driving, so whenever we came to a stop light I'd hold up my camera, which was set to manual focus, and blindly click away.



One of my random clicks caught the wipers in action.



...as well as the gorgeous reflection of the street lights.

Which one is your favorite??

Carousel Dreaming

Y'all have no idea how long I've been waiting to get this shot!!!
Carousels aren't exactly a commonplace thing around here...well, they will be this weekend I'm sure...but anywho, there's one at Kaufmann Stadium where the Royals play. It's part of a pretty cool kid's zone where they have a splash park, mini golf and batting cages in addition to the standard playground equipment.
(and you have to pay through the nose for each and every one, but at least walking around is free!)

The whole kid's zone area closes down sometime around the end of the 7th inning, so I headed over shortly after the 7th inning stretch. I'm glad I waited because the sun was already setting and the crowd was pretty light around the carousel. ...I got there just as they closed the line, which was perfect timing if you ask me.




As a side note, I'm sponsoring several prizes/giveaways this summer.

The one that is currently underway is:
June's Quarterly Top 5 - get more details and link up at Amber's Articles, Click It Up A Notch, or NapTime MomTog - the prize sponsored by me is any one 11x14 print from my shop! But there are two other fabulous prizes as well!

Plus one more is starting next Tuesday and there are two more coming up in August!
Be sure to Like me on Facebook to keep up with all the action. ;)



         

A Sea of Blue

Monday, I think it was, I promised you some shots of clay pots.
Not exactly exciting stuff to hear about, but hopefully you'll find these as beautiful as I do!

There were aisles and aisles of glazed planters!
All colors of the rainbow, all sizes and shapes and textures.
Oh my!




A few years ago, shortly after my son was born, I took a pottery class. It was mainly to get out of the house and have some "sanity time", but also as a creative outlet.
And when I look at these pots - especially the bird bath below - I am craving that 'get-your-hands-dirty' kind of creating! Now, mind you, there is NO possible way that I'd be able to jump in and make a gorgeous bird bath! In my class I managed to make a bowl, a votive candle holder that was supposed to be a bowl, and a plate...perhaps I should do a shoot with those???




And of course, I can not resist cranking that lens out of focus!
This one may actually be my favorite.
I can see it now - blown up to a large scale and hanging in a crisp white cottage over the fireplace.
POW!

A Frosty Christmas

My MIL collects Hallmark Frosty ornaments.
..well, she collects a lot of Hallmark ornaments, but she has one tree dedicated to these adorable ones!
(I'll try to remember to take a photo of it for you when we're there over Christmas...in fact, I may just photograph their entire house because it's all so awesome!)
I love her Frosties so much that when we saw the snowglobes, we got one for our house too!

This shot is my official entry for the LEM challenge this week.

But I thought it looked cute in color, too.

More Christmas Tree Bokeh & Some Rad Flare

...because I'm just certain you haven't seen enough of it, have you?! ;)

I was playing with my 50mm lens the other day and decided to share some different sized bokeh shots: small, medium, and large. I always find it interesting to see how a shot can take on a whole new look with the slightest of changes.

I think I like the small best. 

What about you?

I also hopped on board the Karli-Wagon and tried the tree-through-a-lens-shot.

(side note: I just visited Karli's blog to grab the link to her cool tutorial and saw she had bokeh in various sizes, too!  Karli - you beat me this time! ;) )

Anywho, I thought I'd share a little trick for us Nikon users who also want to get a shot like hers. 

(Thanks must go to Sarah Halstead for tipping me off that Nikon lenses are a little different.)

When Nikon lenses are off the camera, the aperture closes. Or pretty close to it.

That tiny hole will not do.

So I decided to come up with a little ingenuity and find a fix for that problem.

Are you ready for my very technical solution?!

Masking tape.

There's a little slider (for lack of a more proper term) on the back of the lens that will allow you to manually open the aperture. I found that by pushing that slider all the way open and sticking some masking tape right against it, my aperture would stay open sans hands.

Not pretty, but it is effective.

This is our little tree in the kitchen.




And this is our big tree in the living room.

(hmmm...perhaps I should clean my lens.)

While I was taking the above shot, I noticed the sun in my lens.
I played around a little with it and ended up with the following fun sun flare and starburst shots.

I think they turned out pretty rad!

Happy Days Are Here Again!

Will you please, pretty please go to Live Every Moment and vote for my sea shell photo?!


I finally received my shiny new external hard drive over the weekend.

I don't know if I've ever been so ecstatic to get my hands on a piece of hardware!

Needless to say, I wasted no time getting my massive amount of photos transfered over. 

And our computer is running a bit smoother and quicker.

And, over Thanksgiving/our 1st Christmas I got a new 50mm 1.8D lens!
I wasted no time slapping that baby onto my camera
...only to realize that it only auto focuses with certain cameras, and mine was not on the good list.
Grrrrr!
(thanks Amazon, for neglecting to include that *small* bit of information!!!)
So, I've been manually focusing.
It's bliss to have such a pretty and open aperture, but a little daunting to have yet another thing on the to-do list of attempting to take beautiful photos!



But, when shooting pretty bokeh, no focus is needed!
And it actually comes in handy that it's already set to manual.

Justine has inspired me to do more shooting in b&w (she did all her photos in b&w for the entire month of November!), and I thought this shot translated well to that. To me, it takes on more of a soft and feminine beauty that color just didn't give.

Scavenger Hunt & SOOC Sunday

Holiday Colors
The other day I 'splurged' and bought myself some cranberry juice.
Not only do I love the tart taste, I love it's vibrant red...almost like a Christmas red!
It doesn't even need editing, as this is sooc.









Winter/Holiday Icon
Nothing says winter like snow! This shot is actually from last year, although we did get our first snow last night, so there was a similar sight this morning as Seth shoveled our drive.




A Tree
This is one of my favorite ornaments. It holds no sentimentality... it's just pretty and sparkly!
I got it from Pier 1 right after Seth and I were married. I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket and they were having their after-Christmas clearances!




Quiet
One evening we hadn't heard our youngest for a while, so we went to see what she was up to and found her sleeping next to our Christmas tree!
(yes, the clicks of my camera did wake her up.)





Your Favorite Color
This is one from the archives. It's from our trip to Cancun last year.
My favorite color is blue, but specifically the hues of those which you find in the ocean.

Oldies but Goodies

Last week I told you that my hard drive is full...as in busting at the seams full. 

A lot of you suggested that I get an external hard drive, which I did! Thanks for all the suggestions. 

I was hoping to have it by now, but a few days ago I received an email telling me my item was on backorder!! Ack! 

I guess I'll also be getting a lesson in patience...

While I'm waiting for my new 'toy' to get here, I've been going through my old photos. There were some that I had completely forgotten about! Isn't it funny what sticks in your mind and what doesn't?

I've also been working on my Etsy shop. 

I've listed a bunch of new prints, finally made a banner, and freshened up my avatar. 

This is one of those forgotten shots from early this year. 

I really like the colors and abundance of bokeh, so I decided to list it in my shop.

I titled it Effervescence of Winter - quite fitting, I think!

The theme this week for Sheri's photo challenge is sight.
Although it may be a long-stretch, I'm using this photo because without my contacts or glasses, this is about the quality of my sight! My vision is terrible. And although seeing everything in bokeh is kind of pretty, it's not very practical. :)

~~~~~

This shot was also taken toward the beginning of the year. 

My son has oodles of Hot Wheels and they're all so colorful!!

This is yet another new listing in the shop: Car Show in Miniature.

~~~~~

And here's one more from the beginning of this year.
My husband had gone to a food show for work and came home with a bouquet of gerbera daisies...just in time for our anniversary!

The title for this shot isn't near as clever as the above two: Daisy in Sepia.

Saturday Night Lights

Some of you saw this last week, but since the light theme at Simplicity was moved to this week I figured I'd just bump up the post. And I came upon a new challenge just this morning: Happy Monday. The theme there this week is blur, which also fits perfectly with my shot!
Bonus! :)

This was taken at a baseball game, and I think it's pretty cool how the players make their own little spots of light!
...too bad those little spots didn't win. :(






Here are some more shots from the same night - two more at the ballgame and two from the ride home.