Weekly Photo Challenge: Saturated

When I read the weekly challenge, I pictured in my mind’s eye may deep rich colors. But when the challenger suggested even B&W could be saturated, I immediately thought of this image. The flower was a deep crimson color and I was unsure how it would turn out black and white. To say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement. This image hangs in my living room.

This was a deep crimson flower, not one you would think would look good in black and white, but when I converted it, I found I loved the lack of color better. Without the distraction of color, you can see the flower for all its hidden beauty.

Weekly Photo Challege: Carefree

Because even grandpas can be carefree!

Remember grandpa to stop and smell the flowers!

Sunshine Incarnate

To Brighten Your Day!

Lantanas are such delicate little flowers. I love them and they love sunshine! Mix in the color yellow, and its a win, win situation!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fresh

What could be fresher than flowers after a summer rain? These were taken with my every handy iPhone using Camera+. (I do have a new camera, I just don’t have a card for it yet ran out of money)

Here At Last

I have a small fish pond. No it doesn’t have any fish in it, because our local cranes kept eating them. But it does hold my beloved lily plant. Now most of you have become aquatinted with our WEATHER in Oklahoma over the past few weeks, so you will understand when I say hail has kept my plant from blooming for three years!

Each spring for the past three years, just as my lily plant was putting on beautiful leaves pads, we got hit with hail! And not just little hail, but car damaging, leaf stripping hail! Nothing like what hit before all the tornados this year, but enough to cause havoc in my garden. Because of this hail, my lily plant as not put out a single flower in three years! It has depressed me as I enjoy coming out to see the beautiful water flowers opening up in my little garden pond!

This is not snow in May, it is hundreds of marble size hail stones that ripped through leaves and flowers alike!

After the storm last year, nothing was left of my lily plant except a few stems.

 

Well this year, all the hail storms went around our yard and when I came out one morning two weeks ago (before the tornados), I was greeted to a bud about to open and then the next day a full bloom! I know its silly, but with everything going on around me and all the destruction, this single bloom holds a measure of hope for me! Enjoy!

Just opening up to say, “Hi!”

Trying to hide under a lily pad!

So perfectly formed and no hail damage!

pure and white with a touch of sunshine

It reminds me of a tea cup.

 

 

 

May Photo-a-day Challenge: Day 18 Messy

I’m a mom, so when I think of messy, I naturally go to a kid’s room or my house. But that’s not very interesting, so I asked my hubby to find me a tributary or another water source where I could shoot all the gunk that washes up or out of some of our waterways. 🙂

They can be beautiful in their own right!

Day 18: Messy
This is the spillway from Lake Overholser in Oklahoma City. Most of this debris was caused from our recent flooding rains, but some is manmade.

Day 18: Messy
Another shot of the water spillway at Lake Overholser.

 

Day 18: Messy
Apparently the Cit of Oklahoma City just piles up all the old log and tree debris at this particular spillway for removal or burning at another time???

 

May Photo-a-day Challenge: Day 2 Path

Day 2 Path: This is a shot of my front walk – weeds and all. I love the fuzzy little moss that is very slowly taking up residence in the cracks.

Wild Weekly Photo Challenge: Clouds

Pretty, pretty clouds. Rolling and rumbling through the evening sky chasing the sunset across the plains. Promises of rain, threats of storms, I love you just the same.

Living in Oklahoma, cloud watching is more about preservation than daydreams. But I love clouds, even the scary ones! Between our violent weather and our amazing sunsets, we get some pretty amazing looking formations. Whether they are black and rolling or colorful and meandering, our clouds are beautiful.

On a crisp sunny day, the pillowing white formations make for a wonderful afternoon of daydreaming with your children: that one looks like a bunny or that one looks like a dragon! Whatever you see is magical.

On a overcast evening, while the sun is setting, you can get colors ranging from the faintest pink to the deepest darkest red. Colors that cause you to stop whatever you are doing, just to watch as the colors fade to black.

And then when cold fronts and warm fronts collide, you get clouds that make you run for cover. I have photographed many of these; ones that looked like a giant rolling cinnamon roll close enough to the roof of my house that I felt like I could reach out and snatch a bite. My children cried for me to come indoors, but I looked at them knowingly that if this cloud did decide to drop out of the sky to form a tornado, the cover of our “center room” would not be enough. Still I photographed.

I cannot find my scary photos, my pics are not archived that well, so its hard to hunt them down without spending hours, if not days looking for that one just right photo. But I did manage to snap a shot the other night of some big rolling clouds just as the sun was setting. These were a combo of beautiful and scary as they marked the huge thunderstorm that rolled in a few minutes after I took the images. They were moving fast and the light was fading equally as quick, so I did not have time for a tripod. Thus, these images are a bit grainy and not nearly as colorful as they were when I went in to retrieve my camera. But they are what they are. 🙂

Have a beautiful and safe spring!

Phoneography Challenge: My Neighborhood

I don’t actually live in a neighborhood. I live in a rural area where I and many of my “neighbors” have a least five acres. So when WP set the phonographic challenge of photographing my neighborhood with my iPhone, I was at somewhat of a disadvantage. Plus, since we are in the midst of winter in Oklahoma, it is rather a bleak looking landscape.

I accepted the challenge and walked around my place photographing small portions of my landscape. I hope it meets the criteria. 🙂

Ivy on a metal pedal

Sunshine on ivy (the ivy is the only green things in winter)

Tiny little violas no bigger than the tip of my pinky grow heavily amongst the weeds. My grandchildren love these little flowers and hate when I mow them under.

I guess there is a bit of green in these weeds.

 

The only thing that I have found that the iPhone can’t do is focus on something small in the foreground when there is a lot going on in the background. This was the closest I got; if anyone knows how to accomplish this, please let me know.

 

These dried weeds grow on my creek; they are about 7-8 feet tall. With the upward angle and the bright blue sky, they were a perfect subject for my iPone’s capability.

I tried for a silhouette on this one taken on my creek bed.

I sepia toned these on my camera; I love the old world look give to these dried weeds.

Have a great day!

Phoneography Challenge: iPhone Maddness

Okay, I’m not afraid to admit that I have never taken a decent iPhone photograph.  I am a photojournalist, and I work with Nikon SLR’s; I guess you would say that I’m a bit of a camera snob.

This is how most of my iPhone pics look, no thought to composition; why work on it if the image quality is so poor. I used my iphone as a desperate measure for times I didn’t have my camera.

But then I opened up my emails today and had a new posting from a blogging friend of mine, Island Traveler. His images were stunningly beautiful and all taken with his iPhone. He gave a hint of a new camera app that he purchased that apparently made all the difference. I was sure that he must have the top of the line iPhone, mine is just a 4GS, and not with the snooty Suri.

Not all my pre-Camera+ images were awful. This one turned out quite decent. As long as I had good lighting and was outdoors, they were okay.

So I searched the app store for the afore mentioned app and found Camera+ was only a mere 99 cents! What’s to lose, its only a buck? So, naturally I downloaded (or is that uploaded) it and then went outside to my drought-stricken, post winter yard to see what I could find. (I also tried some inside shots as well). I attempted and few trick shots that IT had shown – note: staring up at the sun while you figure out where your camera angle is causes extreme tearing of the eyes!

This is the shot I duplicated from I.T. It was a lot harder than you would think to hold the camera steady, get the sun lined up in the lens and push the button with one finger. I love the flower flare caused by the sun.

Okay, surprisingly enough, it is really hard to take a picture of your own hand while holding an iPhone. And my eyes were watering like crazy.

This was my first Camera+ shot; to say I was surprised at the outcome would be an understatement.

When I came back inside and edited the images in Camera+ I was truly amazed. Even my simple 4GS phone took images to rival my big camera! Needless to say, I managed to drain my phone battery before lunch!

This is of the same kitty only he is much older. I played around with some of the editing features giving him a warmer look. I’m amazed at the amount of detail from a phone camera!

The Phonegraphy Challenge has forced me to go back to my roots in photography; without all the fancy lenses I had to get up close and personal and hunt for interesting things to photograph in my dismal yard. It was just what the doctor ordered to get my creative juices flowing.

Straight up through winter dead branches to behold the bright blue sky.

Thanks I.T. for giving me a swift kick in the photography tush to get me out of my rut of thinking there is nothing to photograph if you can’t travel to an exotic place.

I will be posting my images throughout March’s Phoneography Challenge month! Because the image files are so large (5 mb), it does take a long time to save the images to my phone and even longer for them to be transferred via iCloud to my computer!