Picture Black & White

I started Tracey Clark's Picture Black & White last week and I have to say, as much as I love color, I am really enjoying this class.  It really teaches you how to see lights and darks and focus on shapes, lines, and patterns.  The class is two months long with a prompt every other day so I hope to be much better at this by the end.  Learning is good!

Trip to the Nursery

A trip to the nursery yesterday yielded some great opportunities for shooting flowers, my current favorite photographic subject.  This bird of paradise was the perfect "model" and the light around it, creating such wonderful bokeh, was better than I could have hoped for.  I love shooting at the nursery in the spring when all the flowers are blooming.  I even bought a cactus that was in bloom.  It's a small price to pay for the ability to shoot all I want in such a beautiful place.  Thought I'd create a video of my trip which you can see here.  It is full-screen enabled, so you can click on that and view it in full-screen mode.  Enjoy!

Slide Show of the Dallas Arboretum

Spent a wonderful weekend in Dallas visiting Greg & Liz and got the chance to spend a day with Leigh Love and Stephanie Mull at the Dallas Arboretum, shooting and enjoying each other's company.  I am in Xanthe Berkeley's "Capturing Time Capsules" class and decided to create a slide show of images from the arboretum.

Cactus in Bloom

The cactus are blooming all around me!  I absolutely adore this time of year!  I dare not leave the house without my camera, as I know around the next corner will be a new beauty in bloom.  This is a hedgehog cactus that, for most of the year, is very  forbidding, with long and very sharp needles, but right now it is covered in these magnificent, delicate flowers of the brightest fuschia.  Love that little green center that almost looks like a tiny cactus.  They just fascinate me!  Trying to enjoy every second of spring.