Weekly Photo Challenge: Cherry On Top
The purple coneflowers are in bloom outside my front door and all day I go in and out with not much more than a glance their way.
I see honey bees among the flowers as I rush to the feed mill and a bumble bee as I come back from the vet. But when an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail stops by to feed I can’t help but stop my day to watch it flit about.
A delicate butterfly on such a striking flower- a cherry on top indeed.
I’ve heard people wax poetic about the joys returning from vacation to their home and family.
I think they are all liars.
Personally I seem to be half stuck in vacation mode, confused and overwhelmed by home life. It’s all a bit – “Wait, I have to make you all lunch?” mixed with a touch of, “Where did all you weeds come from?” finished with a dab of “How could all you animals possibly have pooped this much while I was gone?”
So before I become re-mired in broken water heaters (Welcome home!), potty training, crying, lawn mowing, cooking (Three meals a day, what is with that?) and laundry I thought I’d share a few more photos of our fantastic trip to Colorado as I repeat my new mantra…
… it was worth it. It was worth it. It was worth it…
Once upon a Monday, a lady was going to do things.
They were going to be real, adult things that involved leaving the house and seeing people.
Once upon a Monday a lady was stuck at home. So she went into her garden to admire her flowers…
There were plans.
It was exciting.
There she found two butterflies flitting about…
Then the reality of life with three young girls came and smacked her upside the head and she instead played Barbies at a car repair center.
They were remarkably cute and well behaved and so the lady spent an enjoyable afternoon following them from flower to flower while taking pictures.
The End.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Unfocused
Ugh!
This weeks photo challenge was not my favorite. Ideas I had either turned out smudgy and stupid, or had me cursing my camera. Since other than it’s flash my camera and I normally get along swimmingly it was frustrating experience.
Things I have learned this week:
-While having an auto focus is usual handy/excellent/nice/wonderful/easy sometimes a manual option would be really nice!
-My camera won’t do they very cool zoom while capturing technique I read about here.
-In effort to replicate Anne’s very cool effect in her cheetah pictures I discovered that I can’t get far enough away from the neighbors cows.
-I’m never getting rid of my creeping charlie.
-Tripods are essential for taking super zoomed in pictures even when they are of moving things like butterflies.
Today making a last ditch effort for something reasonable I was trying to zoom way in on something hoping to get a similar watercolor effect as the cheetahs had. I was hoping for a “watercolor” pastoral scene, chickens, ducks, cows, sheep… no such luck. Then I realized that the creeping charlie was in full bloom and the yard was swarming with bees and butterflies. Ivy and saw seven different kinds of butterflies and four different kinds of bees, all looking for those tiny purple flowers in the lawn! Unfortunately, even though they aren’t super crisp pictures, the butterflies weren’t what I would call “unfocused.” So I aimed my camera at the only other spot of color in the yard, which happened to be a bunch of chives, zoomed as far in as I could and finally came up with something that I think fits the unfocused bill. Completely unedited it has a bit of that painting sort of feel, just by going to the extreme of the digital zoom. I never would have thought to try anything like that before seeing the cheetah pictures, thank you Anne for the idea!
Here is one of my fairly focused butterfly photos…
…now let’s get on to the next challenge!!!
Behind the Willows 