A life well lived... portrait of a great lady!

Since I'm not real sure I should be posting full names here... I will just tell you that this image is a candid photo of a friend's mother, whom I met this past week. She is here visiting her son who hosted us and some other friends to a pre-Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday. She is an amazing woman at 99 years young... friends in her home town of Memphis have told her that they didn't celebrate her 99th birthday because they plan a big party for her 100th! There is an article available if you would like to read more about her.

In the meantime, I don't normally post images of people and almost never take "posed" pictures... but this struck me because her dress almost perfectly matches the chair and I love the attentive look on her face as she is paying close attention to the lively conversation and chiming in often!

Balloon Flower Stigma... floating above rain water... Summer, 2010

This is for Ginnie... along with a bit of a story. Earlier this month, I posted an image that shows an entire Balloon Flower blossom. And Ginnie left a comment about knowing who to come to if she needed help learning how to use her macro lens... so this is for her.

When the flowers turn their faces up, their "bells" catch water when it rains. I snapped this image after heavy overnight rains using extension tubes along with my macro lens. I think I used the 36mm Kenko extension tube with my Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 lens on a Nikon D90 body for this shot. ((I really MUST start taking notes... the other possibility would have been with the 12mm AND 20mm Kenko extension tubes together instead of the 36mm tube.) Using extension tubes allows for really tight focus on a very little bit of the field of view... leaving the rest as a dreamy wash of color. The stigma is about 1 cm (3/8 inch) in diameter.

Oh... before I forget... Ginnie is someone I'm getting to know through her marvelous blog... you should check it out!

Yarrow blossoms... shallow depth of field... Summer, 2010

I think I've mentioned before that I've been experimenting with extension tubes when shooting some of my flower images. One thing about using extension tubes is that there is less light coming in to the camera compared to using the same lens without any extension tubes. (Stick with me, I don't speak "technical" when I talk about shooting pictures!)

Shooting with the aperture wide open results in the very shallow depth of field you see here. (The alternative is to use flash which isn't something I like to do when shooting flowers in a natural setting.) Yarrow is a perfect candidate for shooting with extension tubes because the cluster of tiny blossoms is nearly all in the same plane, making it easy to get a nice sharp image of the flowers with everything else "fuzzed" into the background bokeh.

Round Two Image for Photography Slam competition...

The previous five posts qualified me for the Final Round in the Photo Slam competition described in this post. This image, entitled Mammoth Hot Springs... surreal landscape of the travertine terraces... is the one I chose for the final round where we were judged on a single image. Some of you may recall having seen it before when I posted it over a year ago after our September, 2009 trip out west.

The top three contestants in the photo slam will be featured in a gallery show at Glen Echo Park in November, 2011. I will definitely post more about that as the time draws near.

Fifth of Five in Round One Portfolio for Photography Slam competition...

As I've been typing the titles for these images, I cannot help but think of Star Trek: Voyager and Seven of Nine (the Borg character played by Jeri Ryan). (OK ... so I like sci-fi on television... but I like to read sci-fi too!)

Anyway, this imge, Tiny dancer..., is of a hoverfly on a balloon flower petal and is the last of the images in my winning first round portfolio in the contest described in an earlier post.

Fourth of Five in Round One Portfolio for Photography Slam competition...

This image, entitled Hydrangea wet with raindrops... is one from a year or more ago that somehow never got posted here. It is the fourth of five included in my winning first round portfolio in the contest described in an earlier post.

And I'm still floating on a cloud for having done so well in the contest... placing in the top three means that some of my photographic images will be in a gallery show during FotoWeek DC 2011 (about a year from now).

Third of Five in Round One Portfolio for Photography Slam competition...

This image, entitled Bumblebee in Coneflower... may be a repeat of a post from 2009... but I'm sharing it anyway because it is one of the ones included in my winning portfolio in the contest described in an earlier post.

Second of Five in Round One Portfolio for Photography Slam competition...

Pink Petal Perfection... dew kissed... is the second of five images from the round one portfolio entered in the Photography Slam competition run by Photoworks (a photography resource and education center based at Glen Echo Park) as part of FotoWeek DC 2010 (an annual photography event in Washington, DC).

I'm quite excited about having taken second place in a field of 40 photographers entered and will be posting the images here over the next few days. The prize for the top three entrants is participation in a gallery show at Photoworks during Foto Week 2011 (about one year from now).

If you have ever been to a poetry slam competition, you might guess that a Photography Slam is modeled after a poetry slam... The forty entrants were judged in 4 rounds of 10 photographers each with the top three in each round advancing to the final round. Audience participation was encouraged as well as bribing of the three judges (tongue in cheek). It was an exciting evening and I was thrilled to do so well.

Photography Slam 2010 Results... Second Place in a field of 40!

Sharing..., three hoverflies on a wildflower, is the first of five images from my round one portfolio. With apologies to those of you who know this already and are probably bored by the news... I'm quite excited about having taken second place in a field of 40 photographers entered and will be posting the images here over the next few days.

If you have ever been to a poetry slam competition, you might guess that a Photography Slam is modeled after a poetry slam... As part of FotoWeek DC 2010 (an annual photography event in Washington, DC), Photoworks (a photography resource and education center based at Glen Echo Park), sponsored a Photography Slam competition.

Photographers entered a total of six images; five images made up a portfolio for the first stage of the competition. The images were projected and judged in four rounds of 10 entrants in each round. The top three entrants from each round advanced to the second round where one image alone was judged against the other finalists. My portfolio of five macro images took second place in the second round and advanced to the finals where my Mammoth Hot Springs image impressed the judges enough to give me second place overall. (missed first place by 0.6 point) The prize for each of the three winning contestants is participation in a gallery show at Photoworks during Foto Week 2011!

African Daisies... backlit and beautiful after the rain...

Last year, I had three different varieties of these in my garden. They are described as tender perennials in our area... but they did not survive the winter of "Snowmageddon" or "Snowpocalypse" as many in the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area referred to our record breaking winter of snow in 2009/2010. This year, I bought one plant LATE in the season and planted it in one of the flower boxes on my deck (which is where this picture was taken). One day I went out to see how it was doing and found it on the ground, dead! I'm pretty sure it was done in by one of the rascally squirrels who had been digging in my flower boxes earlier in the summer. At least I got this one image before the plant was so brutally mistreated!

Wild Clematis, beautiful garden volunteer or weed? Flowers are lovely...

This wild Clematis, botanical name Clematis vitalba, is a garden volunteer and was growing in a very weird spot when I first moved into my home almost 30 years ago. I kept it because of the beautiful fragrance when the tiny flowers burst into bloom in late summer. After a while, I finally had someone dig it up and move it into a better spot and now train it to climb a trellis and provide a lovely show every year!

While searching for the botanical name of this plant, I found an article explaining that this plant is not native to North America, is extremely invasive, and is therefore considered a weed!

Yoda... Bumble-bee in Plumbago larpentae... October, 2010

The rear view image of this fat bumble-bee, wings upraised, immediately brought to mind Yoda, from the Star Wars movies, when I saw it appear on my computer monitor after uploading it. I hope this sight amuses you as much as it did me and that you are having a wonderful weekend wherever you are! (The very next image I tried to capture had no bumble-bee because he had taken flight.)

Platycodon grandiflorus is still blooming in mid-October, 2010

I love everything about these flowers EXCEPT for the need to deadhead them if you don't want them to overtake the entire garden! They spread everywhere because I'm lazy about trimming the spent blossoms before they have gone to seed. Common names for this member of the Campanulaceae family include Balloon Flower, Chinese Bellflower and Japanese Bellflower.

If one DOES remember to cut them back once in awhile, they will continue to bloom into October and some of mine were blooming in the first week of November!

Something different for today... a view of fall colors from the inside looking out... November 1, 2010

Sometimes I post the month and year... sometimes the entire date that an image was taken. It all depends on my mood at the time... so don't be confused if the post date is different from the date in the title of an image!

This is one of the images from a photo shoot during a class given by David Luria, founder and director of Washington Photo Safari. We were "on location" at Strathmore and spent time in the classroom i the Mansion and then on the grounds experimenting with various techniques, looking for the best light and angles for our images. The rest of the images I like best from that outing may be viewed in less than a minute as a slide show. I didn't include the macro images that I took in the slide show but will add at least one of those to this blog in the next few days. (For readers not familiar with Strathmore, check the link and remember for any time you visit the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area in the US... the Strathmore Music Center is a premier place for hearing marvelous music (fantastic acoustics) so keep it in mind in case you ever have the opportunity to hear music there.)

David had many excellent suggestions which we tried to follow in capturing our images... it's always nice to learn new things and be reminded of things once known from years of shooting with my first REAL camera which was a Nikon DSLR with a metal body. I loved that camera (cannot recall the exact model number) which I used for 12 years before it and all my lenses were stolen from the house into which I moved in 1981!