Did You Know????

While we were in Florida a few weeks ago, all of this Spanish Moss caught my eye.

I didn't know much about it.  So I looked it up on WIKI and learned this:  Spanish Moss is a flowering plant that grows upon larger trees, commonly the Southern Live Oak or Bald Cypress in the southeastern United States.

The plant consists of a slender stem bearing alternate thin, curved or curly, heavily scaled leaves 0.79–2.4 in long and  0.039 in broad, that grow vegetatively in chain-like fashion (pendant) to form hanging structures up to 240 in in length. The plant has no aerial roots and its flowers are tiny and inconspicuous. It propagates both by seed and vegetatively by fragments that blow on the wind and stick to tree limbs, or are carried by birds as nesting material.

Now I know where all my crafty moss comes from.  Very interesting stuff!

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Walk About

One of the best ways to refine your photography skills

is practice, practice, practice....

Since we have digital cameras we can take tons of random pictures.

So today I went for a walk around the outside of my house.

I practiced taking pictures of objects to

capture textures and different viewpoints.

Notice the pollen, thats pretty close for my point and shoot camera.

Texture of my birdbath.

Bunny eye view.

A bit blurry.  Trying to get a good depth of field.

A view from up top.

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Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

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Spring Blossums

Spring has sprung around the

Tidal Basin in Washington DC.

The trees will be in bloom for

about one more week.

If you are in the area stop by

 for a fragrant walk around our nation's capital.

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land (Song 2:12)

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Has anyone seen spring? I checked my calendar and it said it started last Sunday. It is still cold and dreary here in Maryland.

This picture was taken in my backyard last spring.

So here is my challenge to you.  Go find spring in your neighborhood and take a picture. It doesn’t have to be flowers.  When you think of springtime what comes to mind? I will be going on a hunt for spring this weekend.  Come back next week to see what I found.

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Leading Lines

The Rule of Thirds is a good guide to use when taking your pictures. Now let's add another

element to the composition of the photograph.

 LINES

When we look at a photo our eye is naturally drawn along lines. By thinking about how you place lines in your composition, you can affect the way we view the image, pulling us into the picture, towards the subject, or on a journey 'through' the scene.




I love this photo my son took of my hubby and I walking over the bridge.

Use converging lines to draw the
viewer into the cute couple holding hands.



The conveyor belt tells the story in this picture.



The bridge draws your eye across the river.

Horizons should generally not be placed in the middle of your frame. This leaves an image feeling unsettled compositionally. A much more effective technique is to place them in the upper or lower third of your frame.

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Wordless Wednesday

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Travel Photography

As most of my followers know, I love to travel.  Maybe it was all the traveling I did as a military spouse or not leaving the tri state area as a child.  But I love the adventure of new things and learning about the area/people I visit.

Let’s get back to photography.  When I travel I make a mental list of things I want to photograph.  I try to get a sense of the area and its people through photography.  I also never forget this:

You can wrap this tripod around anything

and it balances great on all the uneven surfaces.  Love, love this thing! 

So let’s see if you can guess where we went by just looking at these pictures.

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Palms

Watch out for falling coconuts!

One of my favorite shots this time

in Florida were the palm trees.

The Palms down south are like
the Oak tree of the north.

They are are everywhere. I like how they grow and bend! This was our view at one of our hotels.

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Do you have a sunset setting on your camera? I LOVE mine! It just captures all of the glorious colors as the sun dips down on the horizon.

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Dreaming of Summer

Last week we had tempetures in the 70's

and today we are having a winter storm warning.

So I am dreaming of summer and wanted to

share my water lily pictures from Sandy Pond, NY.

Enjoy!

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Technique Thursday

Perspective, according to the dictionary it is the

appearance of objects. building, etc...

realative to each other, as determined by

their distance from the viewer, or the effects of

this distance on their appearance.

Wow, what a mouth full!

When I take my pictures I have learned

to try to get on different levels from my subject.

For the most part people tend to

shoot straight ahead. See below: Take a look at what a little perspective

does for a photograph and

the story you are trying to portray. Take some time to get down on the ground,

stand on chair, climb, lean over..... at your subject.

I guarantee you will like the results! Do you have a photograph with a great perspective?

You can email it to me at snowqueen52@hotmail.com

I will put it in a slide show in my gallery.

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Wordless Wednesday

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Editing Pictures

Remember the days of 35mm film?

Photographers would have to go

through rolls and rolls

of film to get that perfect shot.

Today we are fortunate to have digital cameras.

We snap off as many pictures as we

like and then go into a photo editing

program and make them look fabulous. I have Photoshop Elements 6 on my computer

but I haven't learned a lick about how to use it.

I am a hands on learner,

so reading a book will not do me any good.

So I found a real easy ONLINE

editing program called PICASA. I usually just open up my picture and

fix the lighting and crop it.

But I spent some time in the

EFFECTS tab/area and played around

with these two flower pictures. What editing program do you use?

Do have any cool pictures you would like to share?

I am linking this to my FB page so you can share

your pictures on FB or you can email them to me.

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Sweet Gum

I'm tired of seeing bare trees and lifeless brown leaves

poking through the snow covered ground.

But as I went walking today the Lord

showed His beauty even in the dead of winter.

The Sweet Gum tree has unusual seed pod.

The intricacies caught my eye.
Winter's decoration!

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First Participant

I was so excited my friend read

and used the information from my technique Tuesday post!

Here is what she said about her picture:

"Well I used the technique but I don't have the grid on my

camera so I was guessing. I came pretty close though

and I will use this technique for future photo taking." I put D's picture in the slide show in the gallery.

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