Archives May 2011

Congratulations Becky and Andrew!

“Celebration”

Another beautiful spring weekend and another day of wondering around taking shots.  I decided to attempt something I have failed previously at, HDR photos.  It seems like when ever I have done them before they have never turned out how I like, but today I got several HDR shots that I was pretty happy with.  I used the camera’s Auto Exposure Bracketing feature which made snagging the HDR shots tons easier!  For the uninitiated, HDR, or High Dynamic Range is basically one photo that has been merged from several photos of varying exposure levels in to a single image, creating a unique and surreal looking picture.

This is one of those lone trees you see in a field along the side of the road.  Nothing else around it but the currently empty field.  I suspect there was once a house here, but the house is long gone, just leaving this tree behind.  The tree is unique also in that it appears to have been struck by lightning at some point since it has a weird strip of bare tree running down it with no bark…  Any how, here it is:

“Solitary”

I got to put my telephoto lens to good use this week.  We were supposed to get rain every day this week but we hardly got any.  However on Friday it felt like we got all the rain from earlier in the week in about one hour.  I had my camera with me all week hoping for some good storm pictures at some point, so when the down pour started Friday afternoon, I ran out to my car and grabbed my camera.  This is from my office’s parking lot.  Water was just pooling in it and the giant rain drops splashing down made for a real neat picture.

“Showers”

Spring is finally here!  The weather has been warming up, and the outdoors has come back to life.  Everything is blooming, green, and colorful again, which was this week’s inspiration.  I went out to a local park today and shot a few things around the park, but I didn’t really find exactly what I was wanting to capture spring.  When I got home I took a quick walk around the house for the heck of it, and found our Magnolia plant blooming away in the backyard.  It was just what I was looking for, and right in my own backyard.  I just wish I would have looked there before aimlessly wandering around the park (which didn’t have a single flower garden, way to be Taylorville).

“Magnolia”

It has been a rainy past couple of weeks here in central Illinois which has made getting out and shooting harder than usual.  Luckily this weekend we got a break from the constant rain and I was able to get out and do some shooting.  There is a country road out by Lake Sangchris that always floods over, so I figured with all of the rain we have had, it would be flooded over now and might make for some cool shots.  Well, as happens often it seems, I go out with one thing in mind, and end up with something completely different than what I was thinking, and for the better.  I played with today’s photo quite a bit, and I had even uploaded a different version of it, but something hit me at the last moment, which I’m sure you’ll figure out.  I like how it turned out a lot though.

“Reflection”