Patience

Patience has never been my strong suit, but photography has taught me to slow down...well a little anyway.  Sometimes you can't rush a photo, you just have to wait and let it present itself.  And then if you want to turn it into something special, that requires even more patience.

I can spend hours waiting for a bird to come into position (and I have the bug bites to prove it!), and hours more fiddling with that image in post processing.  In the end I have to answer to myself, translating the finished piece I see in my head into something I like on my computer screen, and ultimately onto paper or canvas.  I am often my own worst critic, but that's ok, because it pushes me to try harder, reach farther, and most decidedly, be patient.

And if photography isn't the catalyst for my new found virtue...well my computer would be the other thing which often tests my patience.  The last few days it has been having hiccups, locking up, and just generally being a pill about things.  I've had a stern talking with it though, so I'm hoping it will sit up and fly right, much like the beautiful hummingbird above! ;-)

I hope you all are having a wonderful week and that no one is trying your patience.

Oh Deer

What a crazy week last week was!  Lots of social events going on, a huge storm that blew through with lots of damage...thankfully only big branches down at my house, lots of work stuff (yard, house, and regular 'ole work), and then Father's Day with a big meal and homemade gluten free chocolate cake...yum!

Today was spent resting and feeling a little like I'd been hit by a bus, but hey, that's how life is sometimes.  I have loads of emails to return, but my laundry is all caught up, and my yard is kind of, sort of looking pretty weed free, so life is good.

I wonder if Ms. Deer, pictured above, has weeks where she feels a little harried?  I have seen her with a set of twin fawns, so I'm betting she would say yes.  I wonder what deer say when they have been going at break neck speed for a few days...probably not "oh dear," or even "oh deer," but they might! ;-)

Enjoy your week, and I hope it's a calm one!

 

The Eyes Have It

They say that black faced dogs are the hardest to photograph...that the eyes of the dog often get lost among their black fur.

I would have to agree that dark faced dogs are more difficult to capture, because the expressiveness of their eyes is more easily hidden, but I love the contrast between dark eyes and dark fur.

And when you do capture those eyes...well you may just melt!

Mrs. Hummingbird

Well, the rain finally let up yesterday afternoon, and the sun was happy to make a comeback...we were happy to see it back too.

I decided to step outside and do a little more hummingbird hunting with my long lens, and I was not disappointed when a beautiful female hummer decided to show up to the feeder.  I'm so glad you liked the other images, and thank you for your kind words!

Not to be forgotten, Mr. Hummingbird showed up too and even gave me a wave hello! ;-)

I think this might be a mating pair, and I don't think this is the same male as in my last post because his throat feathers were far less dramatic than those of the other male.

Just like with the bluebirds, I never tire of seeing the beautifully colored feathers of hummingbirds, and these are her true colors...no increasing the saturation necessary.  Their feathers are iridescent, luminous, and simply brilliant, it's no wonder people have tried to capture these colors for years and bring them into their homes...Mother Nature is quite the color expert!

 

And here she is...Mrs. Hummingbird...she reminds me of that quote...

"Though she be but little, she is fierce!"   ~William Shakespeare ~

Happy Sunday!

Before and After

The hummingbirds are back, and we finally put our feeder out yesterday.  We relocated it to a more convenient place for me to take pictures, and even though it's been raining cats and dogs today, I was able to get in a few shots, so I thought I would share a few before and after images.

As an added benefit of relocating the feeder, I can now stand inside to take my pictures, and the hummingbirds seem to also love the proximity of the feeder to our tomato cages.  As you can see in each of these photos, this little guy was not worried about the rain at all, and was simply enjoying his new found perch.

Because I edit each of my pictures, I thought it might be fun to show you the "before" and "after" shots so that you can see what I do.  Sometimes I do a lot of post processing, mostly on shots that I want to look more like paintings, but a lot of the time I just tweak things so that they look more the way I want them to.

The shot above is a before shot, and even though I like the way it looked straight out of the camera, which it is above, except for cropping, I still wanted to put my touch on it.

So here is the after shot.  I used a texture on it which darkened the background ever so slightly, and I also bumped up the contrast, but just a hair, so that his head feathers would pop a little bit more than in the first image.

I also left some of the texture on the breast feathers, but removed it completely from the head.  I liked that the texture warmed him just just a little and made his breast feathers a bit more golden brown.  I could have done this by changing the warmth too, but I didn't want the effect on the whole bird, just on his body, so using a texture was the way to go.

Above is a before of him grabbing raindrops on his long tongue as they fell, which was pretty cool to watch!  In this one, I mostly just removed one or two errant raindrops which seemed distracting to me.  See the one on the far left of the image and then there is one below his tiny feet.

If the light had been better I could have maybe gotten some cool bokeh with the raindrops, but my depth of field was so small that only a few showed up, which ended up looking like smudges to me...so out they went.

Here, you can see the after shot, which saved in a smaller size for some reasion, but you can see that the drops have been removed.  And once again I increased the contrast just a smidge and de-noised it just a bit to remove the graininess in the background which was caused by my high ISO.  And boosting the contrast slightly makes the hummingbirds stand out a little bit more from the background.  Simple changes, but ones I feel are worth taking the time to make.

You can see that he had his feathers a bit ruffled from the rain, and he spent a lot of time shaking off the water but I couldn't get a good action shot since the light was so low.

In this shot, besides cropping it down, the only editing I did was to convert it to black and white which you can see below.

I love the drama that black and white can lend to an image...it changes the whole feeling and look of a photo.

So there you have it, my before and after hummingbird collection! :)  Of course I always try and shoot the best possible shot each and every time, but I also think that tweaking your images can not only be fun, but it can also take an image and make it look the way you saw it in your head...well at least in my head anyway!

I hope you all enjoy your weekend, and if you are in the path of TS Andrea, like we are, I hope you stay dry and don't experience any flooding!

Love

xoxo Kat

Roses and Seashells

If you were ever to visit my home you would be sure to find two things...

Roses (when they are blooming)...and Seashells (all year long).

Some things just go together, don't you agree?! :)

Nature

This past week has been a blur...we celebrated Memorial Day with a cookout, we had family in town for our daughter's graduation, it was Mr. Tide's birthday, and in just a few days it will be our anniversary, so we've been moving along at breakneck speed.

Mr. Quinn and Misty Belle have loved having so much company around, and today they seem a little down in the mouth that everyone has left them to go back to their respective abodes.  These days they really thrive on having lots of people around to pet on them...so long as they get their 5 minutes to size someone up first...then it's all about them getting extra attention.

While we were out checking on roses this morning we spied this little blue moth, I just love the color!  Oh and apparently I used an old watermark...hence the 2012 date on the pics...oh well.

After our family left this morning, I looked out the window towards the field beside us and saw a doe limping along.  She was a long way off, and I couldn't tell if she had a broken leg, or if she was in labor.

After watching her for quite some time, I finally lost sight of her amongst the tall grasses and the barn, so I may never know which dilemma it actually was, but I hope she will be ok either way.  Isn't it funny how we can shake our fists at deer for eating everything we plant, but then hope they are fine when they seem to be struggling?  I hope that means that we have compassion in our hearts for every living creature...even if they do destructive things we may not like.

 

And speaking of cute but destructive creatures...meet Mr. or Mrs. Groundhog!  This little guy or girl has been eating up my neighbors plants but never gets too far in our yard thanks to a couple of protective herding dogs who don't take kindly to interlopers.

Usually he or she has a nice head start, but today the dogs got the jump on this furry little critter who ended up fairly high in a huge old poplar tree at the back edge of our property.  I put the dogs back inside and then calmly told him or her that it was safe to come down.  After about 5 minutes life was back to normal, and one very happy groundhog was off to greener pastures...literally!