Taken on our first night at the cottage right after a short rainstorm.

I love this diptych. The wind started blowing so hard and the little guy was just hanging on for dear life. (Spicebush Swallowtail)

Silver-spotted Skipper and Clouded (Common) Sulfur

It’s going to be a busy week. Brandon’s mom, step-dad and aunt are coming up on Wednesday to stay and then we’re all leaving for Pennsylvania on Thursday to go to their family reunion. We’re staying up there for a week not only for the reunion and some other family stuff, but for some typical touristy stuff. Even though I’m not terribly comfortable with Brandon’s family, I am looking forward to the trip. We’re going to be staying in a yurt, which is the one thing I am not looking forward to, but I’m trying to look at it like camping. It’s going to be an adventure!

Anyway, since I didn’t post last week and I probably won’t post next week, I wanted to get something up on here. Plus, I know I will come back with about a million photos (I bought a new purse/camera bag so I will be taking my camera everywhere), so I wanted to get these posted since they’re from August. Stay tuned for lots of photos in October.

Fireworks Triptych

Oops, didn’t mean to drop off the face of the earth like that. My computer crapped out on me a couple weeks ago. After trying to pinpoint the issue to a specific piece of hardware (and subsequently reinstalling Windows about a million times, ugh), I finally wound up having to get a new computer. The extra cost sucks, but on the bright side, my new computer is much faster and photoshop runs a lot better now.

I still have tons of photos from May and June to post, but I wanted to go ahead and post my fireworks photos from Sunday night. I’ve never tried photographing fireworks before and didn’t really have any idea what I was doing, but I still like how these turned out. I followed the tips here pretty closely, using “bulb” mode, though I don’t have a remote release yet.

Since we’ve never been to the fireworks here, I had no idea where they would be coming from so we just sat in the same direction as everyone else. Unfortunately, everyone was wrong! Turns out there were a bunch of tall tress right in front of where they shot the fireworks off. The bigger fireworks went above the trees, but it was still pretty annoying. I learned my lesson for next year: Get there earlier! Also, we need to buy some of those fold-up camping chairs because sitting on the ground and trying to maneuver a tripod is really uncomfortable. Still, it was a fun night and not as much of a parking/traffic hassle as some city fireworks shows I’ve been to. I’m already looking forward to next year!

Creativity Boot Camp, Day 7

92/365 - April 2, 2010

80/365 - March 21, 2010

73/365 - March 14, 2010

69/365 - March 10, 2010

65/365 - March 6, 2010

63/365 - March 4, 2010

I’m starting to really like this whole “OoF” (out of focus) style of photography. I don’t really know if I’m doing it right, but it’s fun to try. I love the colors in these, dusk definitely seems like the best time for these kinds of photos.