365 Project -- #162-168

Welcome to another week of images!  I can't believe I've kept this project up for this long.  The funny thing is, all winter long I pined for spring and summer, for photographing flowers and birds and summer and all things green and blue!  And now I feel like I'm running out of things to shoot.  I did experiment a little with camera settings this week.  Plus, I will probably have a few photo shoots in the next few weeks, so I'll have some different images to post--yeah!

I meandered out to my vegetable garden only to discover that my sage had bloomed!  This is its third year in my veggie garden; we had transplanted it to a different spot to make room for snow peas (I'll let you know soon if we actually get a harvest).  The sage took to its new home well enough to bloom in pretty purple flowers.

[162] June 11 -- Blooming sage

Remember the image in last week's 365 Project post showing the preparation of Danny's graduation display?  Here is the wonderful graduation cake made by Keren, homeschool graduate and Cake Decorator Extraordinaire.  This cake graced our fully-laden dessert table, and provided celebratory yumminess for about 200 people.  :)

[163] June 12 -- Graduation cake

My friend's little girl made a mess eating her watermelon--always a great opportunity to take a photo!

[164] June 13 -- Watermelon face

We finally finished digging out and building up a second garden in our front yard.  The guys helped transplant the tallest flowers to the new garden, and since we had TONS left over with no place to plant them, we potted them and stuck them at the curb with a sign.  No one stopped for the longest time, but as soon as I went inside, a lady pulled up and happily took them all.  :)

[165] June 14 -- Free flowers

A sweet neighbor stopped by with a basket full of canning jars for me!  And she gave me a little posy of sweet William which has graced my kitchen counter.

 [166] June 15 -- Gift of sweet William

The image below is my experiment.  I shoot a lot in Aperture Priority mode, but I always have problems figuring out how to get the lighting right when I shoot with sky as the background.  The flower was not backlit, but I wanted the bright orange of this daylily to "pop" as I shot against the sky.  I switched to Manual mode, set ISO at 100 (still bright enough outside), chose my desired F-stop (I think it was f8), then experimented with shutter speed in order to get the lighting on the flower just right.  I did lighten it just a tad in Lightroom3, but I think it turned out beautifully.  :)

[167] June 16 -- Daylily bloom

Though I thought I was running out of flowers to shoot, I realized that my veggies were also blooming!  I captured the below shot of a future green pepper, also shot in Manual mode.  Hopefully this year I'll get peppers that are at least as big as my fist.  Sigh--I'm not the best gardener, but I'm trying!

[168] June 17 -- Green pepper bloom

Hmm--next week's images will surely include a snow pea bloom, a tomato bloom, dianthus, yucca...  FLOWER WEEK!  Hurray for color!!


Capturing the moments of life.

Christine

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