Festival of Butterflies

Last year in August I drove about an hour out of town to our local botanical garden where they were having their annual butterfly festival.  Seriously folks, out of everything I photographed last year, this was the best day I had for new images.  I took about 250 photos in the three hours I was there and came out with about 100 decent shots and several really cool ones.  I can hardly wait for it to come around again so I can take the new camera for a spin. 

If you don’t know where your local Arboretum or Botanical garden is I highly recommend you find out.  They can be wonderful places to take in the beauty of nature without ever leaving your state.

Best of 2007

It seems that many of the photobloggers I read are putting out their “Top Ten” this morning so I thought I’d give it a shot.  I bought my Canon Powershot S3 IS back in January, getting me as close to a DSLR as I could afford at the time and it has definitely done its job at helping me take my images to the next level.  Then, in late summer, I bought a copy of Photoshop Elements 5, took an online course and bought the indespensible book, “Photoshop Elements: The Missing Manual” and that also helped me take another step forward by changing how I post-process my images.  By the end of the year I was adding actions and presets into the mix and now I’m just beginning to see all the different ways I can creatively take an image I see in my head and make it come out looking uniquely my own. 

This next year I am going to do everything I can to get my hands on the Canon 40D and a few prime lenses and continue to delve into learning Photoshop layers. 

Here, then, are my pick of my top ten images of 2007.  (To see my top 100 shots for 2007, head over to my Flickr page and view the slideshow!)  *Click on images to see the full size photographs.*

My favorite macro shot of all my flower images, this one just filled the frame with upclose detail.

My favorite butterfly image from the 200+ I shot at the Butterfly festival in Powell Gardens on an August afternoon.  I cannot wait to go again next year! 

This has to be my best cloud photo of the year.  It was used by Stanford University for their brochure announcing a new weather major at their school.

Gotta be my best sunrise image for 2007.  The golden tones just blew me away that morning and it’s luminosity shined through in this photograph.

My favorite plant photo of the year.  Love the bokeh on this one and the contrast between the soft leaf and the hard-as-nails thorns.

This has to be one of my best insect macros of the year.  I love the bokeh on this one as well as the detail of the tiny hairs along his legs. 

I hate snakes…but this one got me over my fear as he posed for my camera in the driveway of my home.  This is the first snake photo I’ve ever taken where I didn’t cringe when I first saw it. 

I’m a leaf girl…no doubt about it.  It was a three-way tie for my favorite leaf image this year but this one won, hands down.  The texture of the mud against the texture of the leaf sealed the deal as I found it lying in the parking lot of one of my nearby state parks.

This one is probably more sentimental than anything else.  I have access to squirrels 24/7 what with the 16 trees in my immediate backyard and this image really did it for me this fall.  I was so happy with his expression, the angle of the shot and the great bokeh in the background. 

My favorite black and white of the year, this was my second favorite leaf image of the year.  It was my first attempt at taking a color image and converting it to black and white using PSE and I was very happy how it turned out. 

And there they are…the ten best of 2007.  

Busy as a Bee

I stumbled upon a new set of filters that can be used with Photoshop Elements (they are compatible with Photoshop as well) this past weekend.  I finally got a chance to sit down and play with them for a few moments this evening and I am LOVING them!  They are called EZ Actions by Photoblast.  Each action costs between $6-8 if you order “a la carte” but they also have packaged deals for those wanting the whole shebang. 

I purchased five different “actions” for $30 and now realize that with these five actions alone I’m going to spend the entire winter reworking half of the images I took this past autumn.  This is one of my bee photos that I took in mid October with the EZ Action “Focus Select” applied.  It was easy as 1-2-3 and I love the way it turned out on my very first try.

Catchin’ A Wave

I attended the Butterfly festival at my local botanical garden this past August and managed to come home with several hundred images of butterflies, caterpillars, and flowers.  It was a magical day and I can hardly wait to do it all again next year. 

This past weekend I went back through all the images and reworked them - cleaning them up in Photoshop - and this was one of my favorites.  To me, it resembles two surfers both fighting for position to catch the big wave.

Mosquito Minimalism

I’ve been reading a bit on minimalism as it applies to photography lately so when I saw this mosquito hiding behind the spoon rest on my stovetop this morning I took a shot and tried my hand at it. 

Even though the photo was basically a black bug on a white stovetop I still had to convert it to b&w because of the incandescent glow of the indoor lighting.  Then I pumped up the contrast and positioned him off center and that was about it!

Water Wings

The diversity of the insect world is absolutely staggering to me. How is it I can go out to shoot images on a regular basis and come home with a new and different insect every time? Sometimes it’s just a matter of figuring out what species a butterfly belongs to or what classification a grasshopper is - but more times than not its a bug I’ve never even seen before! How can that keep happening to a 47-year-old woman? It’s not like I wasn’t in Girl Souts half my life!

Whatever the reason, I find it fascinating that I keep seeing all these little surprises out in the world. I just wish they wouldn’t keep showing up in my dreams at night…

Mid Flight

I was out for a head-clearing walk yesterday down by the river’s edge when I ran into the biggest bumblebee I think I’ve ever seen. At first I was trying to catch him ON the actual plants but, eventually, I realized the light was good enough that I could bump up the speed a bit - and then it became a game of cat and mouse as he flitted and I filmed.

Although I probably should have bumped the f-stop another notch or two to totally stop this critter in his tracks, I’m happy with my first attempt at freezing the world’s largest bumblebee mid-flight. Lesson learned!

Silence is Golden

Autumn.  Dusk.  Need I say more?

Damsels and Dragons

Not many people know the difference between a damselfly and a dragonfly.  I have to admit, even I was clueless until I ran into a variety of them in the Parkville Nature Sanctuary near my office. 

Turns out if the eyes are close together with no “bridge” between them, they are a dragonfly.  If, however, their eyes are set apart and their wings sit high above their bodies when at rest, they are a damselfly. 

This is one of the things I love about photography - my schooling never ends.

The Competition

Sometimes it’s hard to determine what the most beautiful part of an image is.  Is it the butterfly?  The plant he’s perched on?  The flowers blurred in the background?  I’ve looked at this one over and over and I really can’t decide.  Can you?