A Radiant Sunrise

One morning I was up early and noticed that there was a heavy dew and that the clouds held potential for a colorful sunrise.  I grabbed my camera, slipped on some shoes and headed out the door to the east to see what I could capture.  I adjusted my settings, took a couple of test shots just to be sure, and started snapping away.  In the time it took for the sun to rise I had snapped somewhere around two hundred pictures.  I also did some experimenting with the HDR settings on my camera, you can click here to see those.  The dew on the wheat added an element of uniqueness to an otherwise normal sunrise photo.                

I love the way the sun is starting to peak over the tops of the trees and illuminate the heads of wheat.

I love that this shot includes more of the sunrise, along with the little streak of fog hiding behind the row of trees to the right of the image.  

The anticipation before the sunrise of what is to come.

Do you make a point of it to get up early enough every morning to see the sunrise?  I'm not always up early enough to enjoy it, but if I am I am usually doing the morning chores so I don't always get to photograph it.  I guess there are many ways to enjoy a sunrise though!

This evening as I was working on the computer my little brother came running down the stairs hollering "Bobbi!  You're missing an awesome sunset!  It really is awesome!".  So I followed him back up the stairs to get a glimpse of the awesome sunset, it really was awesome!  I'm thinking maybe the phrase should be 'Stop and enjoy the sunset'.

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?