Dreaming of Spring

As I've been going through pictures from last summer I am continually looking forward to warmer weather and green grass.  We've had a fairly cold winter here this year, though we haven't had much snowfall compared to past years.  Now that we're into April I'm hoping the warmer temperatures and the rain will start coming soon!

I thought I would go through and share some of my favorite pictures from last summer/fall.

This last fall my sister and my brothers and I went out on a walk through the back pasture, taking pictures and checking on the cows.  The leaves in the timber were popping with color!

The sun was setting as the cows were enjoying the lush green pasture.

 Maggie, our calf to one of our milk cows, was pretty curious as to what we were doing out in the pasture.

 Storm clouds rolling through during a nice spring day last year.

 I always look forward to the Grape Hyacinth blooming in the spring, and if you can get close enough they even smell good!

I've been experimenting with verses and quotes over photos lately.

What are you most looking forward to this spring/summer?
Leave a comment and let me know!

Experimenting with HDR

When I got my new camera last August, I noticed it had an option for HDR (High Dynamic Range) so I thought I would give it a try.  HDR photography is where you take several shots with different exposures of the same scene and put them together, one over the other.  That way you can incorporate all of the exposures together to result in a photo with more even lighting.  My camera's HDR setting will automatically put three different exposures together.  This is definitely the easy way! This is especially helpful with landscape scenes where the land is darker and the sky is lighter.  If you do it right, you end up with a photo that looks more like real life, but you can over do it too!  I still have a lot to learn, I've only tried it out three times in all!

These three pictures are ones I took on an early heavy-dew June morning.  My favorite would be the one above, as the wheat isn't quite as blue looking as the other two.  I also like the framing of the trees and the clouds.  I did a slight edge vignette to help draw the eye in to the center of the photograph.

Because the dew was so heavy, it caused the wheat to have a "frosted" look, even though there wasn't any frost.

This one also has a slight vignette.

 I'm definitely looking forward to the options HDR presents, along with the challenge of learning how to use it better to achieve the look I want.

Have you ever used HDR before?  Which picture is your favorite of the three?  What's your favorite thing to photograph?

Flowers of Spring

After a long winter, the thing I look forward to the most in the spring is all of the new flowers popping up here and there.  It's as if everything was asleep during the long cold winter and is just waking up, vibrant and newly revived for the coming months of summer.  There's nothing quite like all of the new life surrounding you to get your creative juices flowing!  This usually ends up in an over abundance of flower pictures, but of course not all of them are worth posting.  Here are a few that I was pleased with the way the focus, composition, and subject matter all came together to make a complete story.  Although each one of these definitely has room for improvement.

Wild Cherry Blooms

I think these are wild cherries, but I'm not positive.  So don't go eating a bunch of them! ;)

 Periwinkle Ground Cover 

These were growing around an old house I took pictures of this spring.

Rose Vines by the Pond

It was starting to get dark while we were fishing at the pond and I loved the way the colors were starting to change as the sun was going down.  I had to snap a few photos of the green rose leaves on the red vines.

What's your favorite part about spring?

A Busy Junco

During the winter months we like to fill the bird feeder and watch as all of the "overwintering" birds help themselves to dinner.  We always have a lot of Dark Eyed Juncos, all different kinds of Sparrows, a few Blue Jays and Cardinals, and every once in awhile a Tufted Titmouse or a Nuthatch will show up.  

On the warmer not-freeze-your-face-off days I like to bundle up and take my camera out to see if I can get some shots of the birds at the feeder.  This day was sorta in between the warmer and the freeze-your-face-off weather!

A Junco enjoying a Sunflower seed.

To capture these two pictures I was laying on my stomach in the driveway for thirty minutes waiting for some of the birds to get close enough.  I was finally able to get a few shots!  The rocks didn't make a very comfortable spot to wait, though!

Back in August of last year I purchased a new Nikon D7100.  At first I was having trouble with the focus, but after experimenting and reading through the instruction manual I figured out I could select where I wanted the camera to focus!  Most of you photographers out there probably already knew that, but oh well! ;)  These two pictures are from when I finally got that figured out!  I was so excited and was finally able to enjoy my camera more!

Here is a picture I snapped of my sister in her freeze-your-face-off-weather getup. :)  Luckily the sun was shining and the wind wasn't blowing too bad!

And here is the picture she took of me in my getup!  You always gotta carry an extra pair of insulated gloves! :)

How do you like to dress for cold winter photography?

A Bountiful Harvest 2013

Last year our garden did fairly well.   We actually had watermelons!  That was the first time I've been able to get them to grow, so I was pretty excited!   The variety we grew was called Desert King.  They are a yellow heirloom watermelon.  They kind of have a mild fruity flavor and pale yellow flesh.  We picked several ripe off of the vine, but the rest we had to pick early because a frost was coming, they did seem to ripen okay in the basement.

A slice of Desert King Watermelon.

Seminole Pumpkin

Seminole Pumpkin from the garden.

We had a ton of these pumpkins!  They grew like crazy!  The vine tried to take over the whole garden!  They had deep orange flesh and very good flavor.  They are small 2-4 lb squash, perfect for when you only want to cook a small amount and not have a bunch left over.  Or as my sister says "Perfect for when you only want to cook one and have no more than one cooked!"   She's not ornery at all........ ;)  She likes to help me with my posts! 

A bunch of carrots, beets and radishes.

We also had carrots grow last year, too!  We usually don't have much luck with carrots, but last year we were able to freeze a few pints for the winter.  They're good for getting out of the freezer and plopping into soups for an easy-to-make meal.  We grew yellow carrots, red carrots, and orange carrots.  In the winter months I like to plan out the garden and take seed inventory.  If we are low on a variety of vegetable I always like to flip through seed catalogs and pick out a new kind to try.  The yellow carrots are Jaune Obtuse du Doubs (don't ask me how the pronounce it!)  and the red carrots are Atomic Red.  I think I preferred the yellow carrots over the red carrots, they had a better flavor, though both were good.  Unfortunately the carrots haven't sprouted yet this year, they probably need re-planted.

What kinds of vegetables do you like to grow?  Do you like to try new varieties each year, or stick to the tried-and-true ones?  Anyone have any tips for getting carrot seed to sprout?

Week 28: Carrots and Beets

I've been harvesting a few things out of the garden lately.  First there were peas, then some radishes, and now there are carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, and kohlrabi.  Of course, we've only gotten two kohlrabi, about 3 or 4 turnips and a little more than that of rutabagas.  So definitely not an overload of vegetables!  Although, it is about time to pull the rutabagas so that a Fall crop can be planted.

 

These carrots are called Tonda Di Parigi, they're a 19th-century Parisian heirloom carrot.  They only get to about 2" long and about 1 1/2" in diameter, so they're perfect for hard soil.  They grew really well for me, as you can see.  I can't wait to cook some up for dinner!

These beets are Lutz Salad Leaf.  The tops are supposed to be good in salads, I will have to try it sometime!  They grew pretty well considering they got trampled a few times by my little brothers!

I like to grow old heirloom varieties because it's almost like planting a piece of history!  It's fun to imagine all of the people before who may have grown the same variety at one time!

Week 26: Spring Garden

I thought I'd share some pictures of our garden.  This year it was so cold much later than normal, it's still not quite as hot as it usually is.  I'm  fine with that!  Because of this the garden was planted much later than I would have liked.  I still have three more beds to plant!  As far as weeds go, we've done a pretty good job at keeping them down, at least in the beds that are already planted.  Mulch helps a lot!

 

 

Last Fall I mulched half of this garden with leaves and chicken manure.  This Spring I left it like it was and planted  right in it.  At first the mulch hadn't composted much and some of the smaller seeds had a hard time sprouting unless I added a little dirt on top and planted the seeds in there.  Now it seems to have composted more and the seeds sprout better.  It has helped keep the weeds to a minimum. 

 

With the other half of the garden I have put down one layer of newspaper and added a thick layer of grass clippings after I planted the bed.  If you were planting seeds I would wait until they have sprouted and are about 4 or 5 inches tall before adding the mulch.  That way you don't suffocate them.  You want to be sure and mow the yard before anything goes to seed, otherwise you will be planting grass/weeds in your garden by adding the grass clippings.



 

 

This is a bed of onions, one of the first things I planted this year.  I only just got around to putting the newspaper and grass mulch on.

As you can see we have to have the garden fenced to keep the chickens out.  The bed in the middle is a row of cucumbers down the middle with some radishes on the sides.  The bed to the right is peas.  To the left you can see a few kohlrabi and beets.

This is a row of beets growing between two rows of bush beans.  Some of the bush beans have climbing tendrils on them!?  I don't think that's supposed to happen!

 This is a picture of the Oregon Sugar Pod II snow peas I mentioned in the last post.

 

 

Some cilantro that is past it's prime.

This is a close up of the cucumbers in the second picture.  They are Poona Kheera cucumbers from Baker Creek.  I grew these last year.  Boy did they produce!!  I ended up with enough to make two kinds of pickles and also some left over to eat fresh.

These are Purple Plum radishes.  They were planted kind of late and are having to grow in the heat, they seem to be doing ok though.

Another shot of the onions.

Do you like to garden?  Do you have any tips for getting the garden in earlier?

Week 25: Peas in a Pod

It's been a pretty good spring for growing peas.  At first I was afraid it was going to get too hot before our peas bloomed, but then it cooled back down again.  We have had a ton of snow peas!  I have been eating them raw with almost every meal!  I grew the same kind last year and they've done well again this year.  They're called Oregon Sugar Pod II, you can find them here on the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds website.

 

The pictures that I am sharing with you today are shell peas.  They are also from Baker Creek, they're called Lincoln.  They have also grown really well.  Though they produced about a week and a half later than the snow peas, we were still able to get some pickings in before the hot summer heat.  These were a nice addition to some stew I made about a week ago.

They produced about 6-7 peas per pod average, with a few having 9-10 peas per pod!  They were nice sized, too.  I plan on saving seed from these this year and planting them again next season.

 



 

 

I may try to plant some for a fall crop if the seed is ready in time!

 I like this edit!

 

 

 

I couldn't decide which I liked best between these two edits.

I can't wait until the warm season vegetables start producing!  Can anyone say Tomatoes?

Week 24: Pink Clematis

I planted this clematis about three years ago.  The first year I don't think it bloomed at all.  The second year (last year) it had several blooms.  This year it has exploded!  There are tons of blooms all over it!  I really like Clematis and hope to get a few different colors started.  I believe this one is called Nelly Moser.  Though I may be wrong on that one.  It doesn't look anything like the picture that was on the package that I bought!

 

But I still like it anyway!

 

 

 

This picture was one of those where you think, "Hey, I wonder how it will look from this angle."  One of those times where you normally wouldn't have tried it this way.  I really like how it turned out!

This one is probably my favorite!  Sometimes I have a hard time getting the camera to focus where I want it to.  I will think I have it right, take my camera inside and unload the pictures only to find out it's not focused where I thought it was!  With this picture I wanted it focused on the white stamens in the center of the flower to help draw your eye into the picture.  It's pretty close to where I wanted it.

Have you been enjoying the summer flowers? 

Week 22: Another Old Barn

I took these pictures back in February while I was trying to get pictures of Bald Eagles.  Needless to say, the barn pictures turned out better than the Eagle ones.

 



 

 

When I edit pictures I will try editing in black-and-white to see if it looks better than the original.  With this picture, I couldn't decide which I liked better.  Though, I am leaning more toward the black-and-white version!

Which is your favorite?  Do you tend to like black-and-white or color better?

Week 16: A Black and White Barn

Some more barn pictures!!  My Aunt asked me to take some pictures of the old barn that her Dad grew up with, so of course I said yes!  I was originally planning on getting some pictures of the barn in Winter with snow and some in Summer.  But, I never got any with snow on the ground.  It will have to wait till next Winter I guess.  Unless we get snow tonight, as it is in the forecast!  This Spring doesn't seem too eager to warm-up, that's for sure.

 

I have been playing around in Photoshop and came up with this edit.  I think the grey banner goes well with the black and white coloring of the photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is another edit without the banner. 

 

 

Originally, I wasn't going to keep this photo as it had a weird bluish tint to it (my fault in not getting the settings correct).  After some editing, I was able to save it!  I liked how it turned out.

What about you?  Do you ever edit a photo that you originally didn't like, and then end up liking it afterward?