A beautiful, lonely sunset

Tonight's sunset - on the eve of a big storm.

November moon

For Gran, Dad, Lynnie, and Mom - who were either here when I took these, or driving away encouraging me to do so. :p

Backyard flower photos

I just went out and took some photos in our backyard - we have wildflowers growing, since we haven't had time to "groom" the flower beds and lawn yet (and there's no point in doing so with the winter frosts coming in the next several weeks).

Ever since the bee sting at the beach, I'm utterly terrified of anything that flies and has a stinger. So I got some great macro flower close-ups, but then I saw a bee across the yard and jumped up to leave...then figured I could try out my camera's zoom. So the bee photos are taken from across the yard, with manual focus settings. Still turned out pretty good!

All of these photos are untouched/unedited (for now; I'm actually toying with them in a photography program I just got for my Mac!), and all the colors are real, though enhanced by the camera itself in a function called "TrueColor Fix" - which simply means the camera will pick up foliage colors and other vibrant colors in nature instead of dimming or fading them like regular photography will do.

Whatchoo think?

Tuesday photos

It was an easy day at home today - the first time in a month I've had time to relax. It was a beautiful day with a light breeze, so I took my camera (A.K.A. Cannonball? Is that what we named it, Lynnie? LOL) out to the yard to experiment with the settings some more.

I am QUITE pleased with the results. What do you think?

P.S. None of them are touched up or altered. Any artsy effects were done ON the camera itself, through its various settings.




















































These were actually inspired by Aunt Lynnie - she told me a few weeks ago that she likes to get pictures of flowers from the ground, looking up. I can do that much more easily on this new camera since it has a tiltable, revolvable external screen. So I didn't have to get down on my belly in the dirt. And I really like how these came out.









And here's another sample of my zoom power:

Dogs & cats

I love animals, and I love that we live in a place far enough away from the bustle of the city that we can enjoy birds, squirrels, bunnies, cats, dogs, and yes, even coyotes.

One of the neighborhood cats gave birth in our shed a few weeks ago, so now we have a bunch of kittens in residence! I got a few pictures today, but most of them were shy and I didn't want to scare Mama, so I'll get more later.

And then our beautiful Copper (who's getting old! :() And Cricket, who was, ah, mid-yawn. I knew she was secretly a demon.