George with drink

We've had a tough day.  George's mom was admitted to the emergency room in Greenville (NC) and we needed to come here to be with her.  We finally got out of the hospital and to a restaurant about 9:00.  We were exhausted and, of course, I had no photo.  I shot this image of George with a drink and the first laugh he's had all day.  It was dark and the iPhone doesn't do well in low light conditions, so there is a lot of noise in the photo, but it's all I have today.  If I can post on a night like tonight, I'm just happy to get it done.

Old Gargoyle

Our assignment for this week in class is to take photos of textures.  I'm not sure exactly how we're going to use them yet, but we'll see.  Anyway, the textures that I took today weren't fabulous.  I was trying to use my 100mm macro without a tripod, and, as usual, realized that I just can't do it without a tripod.  While I was scrounging around the yard looking for interesting surfaces, I came across this old gargoyle that was part of a broken fountain in our garden a long time ago.  It now sits back in a hidden area with my potting bench, and it's slowly being taken over by English ivy.  I liked the patina on the old concrete.

"A" is for Apple

Since I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas some days, I thought I'd start a series.  So....."A" is for Apple.  Yes, I'm going to do an alphabet series over the course of the next month or so.....probably whenever I'm stuck for ideas.  I decided to play around with some fun distortion by using my widest lens (17 mm) with a shallow depth of field (f2.8) and shot from below looking up.  I'm starting to become more comfortable at the "short" end of my lens.

Boring photo

I'm digging deep today....no creative juices whatsoever.  I'll blame it on Olympics-induced brain fog.  Anyway, I know I'm in trouble when I start setting up still lifes.  Here's one of some of my more photogenic perfume bottles.  Ugh..  At least I start my new photography class tomorrow night and maybe I'll be more inspired.....

The Brat

Although she looks like an angel in the photo, this little brat kept us up until 2:00 am this morning and is a reason I have no energy to do a better shot.  Somehow she wedged herself down in a deep wooden box to which our TV is attached.  She couldn't get out, so at 12:30 we're dismounting our large TV from the wall and tearing up the structure to set her free.  Now we'll have to rebuild it and reinstall our TV tonight.  Cat joys never end!

I'm also getting to the point in this blog where I'm really struggling to come up with an interesting photos.  Maybe I'll research some other blogs to come up with ideas....

A few late afternoon shots of the park today.  It was nice to see a little sunshine after a rainy morning.  Hopefully spring will inspire more interesting images.

City Lights

Last night after my post I took some photos out of the window of our hotel room (we were staying uptown to celebrate Valentine's Day) to get some images of the city at night.  We didn't have a fabulous view, but this was my favorite.

Happy Valentine's Day!