Mom's Lily

The hubs and I traveled to Texas last week to settle some things with my mother's estate. Spent a lot of time at her house, and found a lily growing in her back yard, all by its lonesome. I had to take a photo of it.

Sunflower Landing

This is a digital image creation that I made from one of my own sunflower photos, Dylan's Sunflower, that I took last summer. I'm calling it Sunflower Landing. I've created it for the 3 Muses Black & White Challenge.  We had to use the Black & White theme, but that was really our only limitation, and how we interpret that theme is up to each artist. Any medium can be used for the 3 Muses challenges too, which gives us a lot of wonderful creative freedom. And in this case, it gave me an excuse to play around with digitally editing and altering my own photos, which I really enjoy.

I wanted to create an image that would appear as if it came right out of my sketchbook. So I took my sunflower photo and first changed it from color to black and white. Then I gave it a bit of extra contrast. And then I gave it a watercolor pencil effect that has no color. Next I wanted just a little pop of color, so I added the colorful butterfly to the sunflower's leaf. And finally, I added a frame to the photo that makes it look as if I've torn it out of my sketchbook.

I used PhotoScape to edit this photo. Normally I would use PaintShopPro, but I only have that program on my laptop, and I keep PhotoScape on my desktop PC for when I want to edit photos from there.

I really love how this turned out, and it makes me want to do more with digital editing of my own photographs. It also makes me want Spring to hurry up and get here, especially after the 10-12 inches of snow we got yesterday!

Red Lily Photographs

These photographs are of some beautiful red lilies that I planted at my daughter's house late last summer. They are opening up and looking so beautiful for the first time this season, I just had to snap some photos of them.

There's something so beautiful about a lily...especially one this color. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed photographing it. And gosh, I think I need to plant some of these in my own yard!

Peony Photographs

The holiday weekend was a wonderful chance to get out and enjoy some sunshine and a bit of nature as well. So I grabbed my camera to get some photos at the same time.

Peonies are some of my absolute favorite flowers. They are so beautiful, and their scent is just heavenly! We bring some of these in each Spring and put them in a vase, and their scent fills the room for days on end. I just love them.  Hope you enjoy the photographs.

Water on Lily

We used to have a beautiful Day Lily in my front yard; it was one of my favorite trusty perennials. One year on a rainy summer day, I was out in the yard and saw the water on the leaves of the Lily and hurried to get my camera. It just looked so beautiful. Another photo from self-developed film and printed by me.

Wet Leaves

This was my first attempt at photographing water on leaves. It was just lightly raining when I took the photo, and the droplets looked so perfect atop the leaves. They just begged to be photographed, as do so many things in nature. Another photograph from self-developed film and printed by me.

In the Field

Nature photography is really something I am quite partial too.  There is so much beauty and inspiration to be found in nature, in my opinion. These wild weeds were found In the Field as I drove to a friend's house in the country one day. Just thought that they'd make a neat photo. Another photo from self-developed film and printed by me.

Sky Leaf

Once upon a 4th of July, as the Hubs and I were settled in at a local park to await the annual fireworks display, the sun was setting.  I brought my camera with me, as this was the year I got my digital camera, and I wanted to try it out. I was glancing around through my viewfinder, looked up at the sky,  and this is what I saw.

To me, it looks like a leaf in the sky. I'd never seen anything quite like that before, or since. I really think it's beautiful, and I'm so glad I was able to capture it that day. What a great way to start a new collection of nature photography!