At the carwash

We're heading out to Utah in the morning and I've already packed my camera gear, so I decided to get a quick shot with my iPhone.  We were sitting in line at the carwash and I snapped this one.  When I started editing it, I played around with the contrast, clarity and saturation and the pollen on our windshield turned into snow.  Tomorrow I'll hopefully get some nice images of the American Southwest.

Alex's lemonade stand

This is a photo of our next door neighbor, Alex.  He and his friends (with a little help from his mom) had a lemonade stand this afternoon to raise money for a friend with Cystic Fibrosis.  Great kids and cool lemonade...a perfect duo for a nice spring afternoon.

George on porch

A very busy day today and since I haven't posted a photo of "subject" (aka George) in a while, I decided to catch a quick shot while we sat on the front porch, had a glass of wine and talked with our neighbors.  I've looked back over my blog and realized that most of the photos of George are when he has a glass of wine (or something) in his hand.  I guess I should say that he doesn't drink all the the time, but it just seems like when we sit down to relax and I have a camera in my hand and he has a glass of wine in his.  I think he's getting a complex, however, therefore, the disclaimer.  I still had my wide angle lens on from my shot yesterday, so it has a little distortion, but I like how the image played out.  It seems like such a Southern spring image....on the front porch on a warm day, sitting among the blooming azaleas....

Spring cleaning

I've been a little under the weather today, so I didn't feel like doing much (including thinking of a creative photo).  I'm still in the process of spring cleaning, so I decided to make a little progress since I was stuck in the house.  This is a room we use for reading, my photography printing, any art I do and also it's generally the room we use to store anything we can't find another place to hide.  I hesitate to call it a "junk room" so I'll call it our "studio" (sounds better, huh?).  Anyway, I decided to clean out the bookcases and get rid of 6 years worth of cooking and travel magazines and lots of old books that we've read and need to donate somewhere.  I'm always struck that the process of cleaning is so inherently messy.  I had to get the wide-angle lens to capture the chaos.  Tomorrow I tackle the closet!

Winghaven

Today I spent a wonderful couple of hours at Winghaven, a wooded garden near our house.  It was a beautiful spring day and the images just seemed to leap up and grab the camera.  By the time I left, I had taken almost 150 photos.  Yikes!  The hard part was trying to just choose one....so I didn't.  Here are some of my favorites from the afternoon.

Someone else's money

I needed a quick post today and I also wanted to try out a new travel tripod I bought to take to Utah next week.  So, I got out my macro lens again and took some photos of some old foreign currency I found in a drawer the other day.  I always enjoy collecting a few small denomination bills and coins when we travel.  In particular I love the nice colors and artwork on the paper currency.  Here are a couple I like.  Steven and Lindy, you should recognize one of these!  (The top one is from Zimbabwe and the bottom one is from the Czech Republic)

Yet another cat photo

Okay.....I'm sorry for today's post.  I've been working all afternoon on printing just one photo on art paper to frame for our mountain house.  Printing requires so much more patience and work than I ever knew and I got so into it, I looked up and realized it was 4:30, no blog photo, and a dinner reservation at 5:30.  So, I needed something to shoot quickly.  Suzy was outside in the sunshine, so she was a convenient target.  Maybe I'll get around to something better tomorrow.  Not too happy about this photo, but I love the image I printed!