21/366

16 years ago today, I went for a walk with my tall, dark, and handsome boyfriend. On that walk, he asked me to marry him. This summer we will be married 15 years.




My engagement and wedding rings (They're soldered together.)

11/366

It's January 11th and 52 degrees with no snow on the ground here in Wisconsin. According to the weatherman, we've only gotten 1.7" of snow so far this winter ... definitely odd. However, we are supposedly in for a big change with anywhere from 3-9" predicted for tomorrow into Friday.

In the meantime, here's a "winter" photo I took this afternoon.




Dormant tree bud - Doesn't it look like a rose?

Dandelion Details

I took this dandelion picture last year. I really like the detail of the lines of dandelion fluff.



I'm submitting this picture for both Shoot-n-Tell's bokeh challenge and Paper Heart Camera's "Up Close and Personal" challenge. Be sure to visit each site to see more awesome submissions.

Photography Class Assignments

Remember when I mentioned that I'd signed up to take an online photography class this fall? Well the class has started! Hooray!

This week we are studying and experimenting with aperture and f-stops.

Below are this week's assignments that I've completed so far.

f/4


Same shot at f/11


See the difference in the backgrounds?

f/5.6 (optional assignment)


f/5


Same shot at f/16


I still have one more required assignment to complete before Monday and two more optional ones.

Clover

Every Friday is "Macro Friday" over at Blogging From Bolivia. I thought I'd jump in and participate over there for the first time today.

I took this picture of clover last summer as I was was going for a walk along a country road near our house. Isn't it amazing how much beauty is in the everyday flowers we often consider weeds? (Or food if you're an animal!)



Be sure to check out all the other gorgeous macro photos for this week over at Blogging From Bolivia.

Butterflies

Perceptive Perspective has "Critters" at its photo theme for this week.

We have a bunch of coneflowers planted in the flowerbed in front of our living room window. This year a whole bunch of butterflies discovered it and decided to make it their playground. Sometimes when you walk past, atleast 6 butterflies fly up out of the flowers. Today I snapped some pretty nice pictures with my telephoto lens.



This one is my favorite because I love how the depth of field almost makes the flower with the butterfly on it look like it is floating out of clouds.




Be sure to visit Perceptive Perspective to see more awesome critter photos.

Hello, Toad!

The kids found a toad in the grass yesterday and caught it. They used the bottom of a cardboard apple box and made a whole environment for it, complete with grass, rocks, and an old ice cream bucket lid full of water and a bit of sand. Quite the digs!

I asked our oldest son to take the toad out of the box and set it in the grass so I could get a good picture of it.



The challenge at You Capture this week is "Get Down Low". You can't get much lower than this since I was lying on my belly in the grass when I took it!

Mr. Toad was very cooperative during his portrait session. I think he only hopped away from me once when I was taking his picture.

I asked Oldest Son to put Mr. Toad back in his temporary home when I was done photographing him. No, I did not want to touch the ugly little creature! Oldest Son had no qualms about it though!



Check out You Capture's "Get Down Low" photo challenge to get the low down on more pictures taken from down low.

Weekday Photos: Macro

Go to Weekday Photos to see more macro pictures.

Weekday Photos: Macro

Budding leaves on the girls' gingko tree



For more macro photos submitted for today's challenge, go to Weekday Photos.