Lakeside

EDIT 4/25: When I got to work today on a different monitor I see that none of photos below look how they did last night when I spent hours working on them.

Ever since I darkened the brightness on my monitor I have had trouble with how my photos on every other monitor but my own. I guess I will have to brighten my monitor back to where it was and re-doing every one of the photos below because of the terrible halos on every photo that involves the sky (which is 98% of them).

I have so much to edit and it is really upsetting that I wasted a whole night on processing all of these photos and now I have to re-do them all.

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Original post:

I took some time to go to the part after work again. Today I gave the flowers and the macro lens a break. I brought my tripod with me because I was interested in doing HDR waterscapes near the lake.

I can't even express how wonderful the weather was today. I was so glad to be outdoors even if it was only for a little under an hour.

In order to get these you have to go on a little path through a wooded area and there are little great spots in between where I was able to stick my tripod and get different views of the lake.

These are all HDR shots with 3 exposures each:

(click all photos to view larger)

Next time I'll try from the other side of the lake. I only had so much time before I had to leave and there were a lot of people out and about at the lake so I was limited on what angles I chose.




Oh the reflections, the reflections!!






I made my way over across the street to another section of the park with a lake and got some more great angles!




This place is gorgeous and the afternoon light was perfect for these photos!



These are some of my favs of the day. I love bendy tree trunks!







Oh and while I was there 2 of the geese at the park had the nerve to hiss at me! LOL! So I hissed right back at them!



I always visit this place so I'm sure you'll be seeing more of it from different perspectives soon enough!

Feel free to check out my entire HDR Gallery: http://jenweaverphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3868580_st8qe/1/284706791_saeNW

On the Same Level With Nature - Up Close and Personal

What a beautiful day! Seriously - it was so amazing outside today.

Too bad I was in the office all day (except for the few minutes I ran out for lunch and actually got to feel the sun on my face from the office to the car, the car to the store, and you get the picture!). The dashboard thermometer read 86 degrees and that was shocking to me!

This is the time of the year where I truly feel like I come alive. When I get out of the office at night it's like I'm "released!" and "full of the power of spring"!! On spring days like this I tie my hair back, roll down the windows, and open the sun roof when I drive. I can't get enough of that warm spring wind all around me. Don't you know that feeling??

Okay, sometimes I try to contain my true silliness on my blog and keep it to pretty professional "talk" but I think it's okay to post how something made you feel alive and how it inspired you.

Well...with that said...today the feeling was like ---> I wanted to find large open field and just run through it barefoot with my hair flowing in the breeze!!

Sound strange, corny, weird? I doubt it you'd think that...come on! admit it! I'm sure you've had visions of running through a beautiful open field, feeling the sun on your face, while your hair blows in the breeze (well skip the hair blowing in the breeze if you're a guy and you don't have flowing hair LOL).

This is the time of the year where it's not burning hot and you can feel spring physically and mentally (I think that's why they call it "SPRING FEVER" LOL!) and you just can't wait to be outside.

Unfortunately I wasn't dressed for the occasion for running through any fields with my "work clothes" and high heeled boots on LOL! (Imagine the site as I'm running and go tumbling down in my boots!)

So, I settled for another day of getting VERY Close and personal with nature by using (only) my Nikon 105mm f/2.8G VR AF-S lens and shooting some macros at the park I frequently visit on my way home.





Macro is a whole other world...you are literally a foot away from your subject, up close and personal and certainly on the same level with your subject. I wasn't perfectly dressed for this either - but did happen to remember that I have a spare pair of sneakers in my trunk and a padding thing to kneel on!





This session was even more fruitful then the last one in terms of variety. I headed over to the rose garden section of the park (this place is huge) and I set up for getting close to the flowers by lowering the tripod as low as it would go. I made a note to bring my Gorilla Pod next time and see if it can support the weight of this lens. It's hard to get close w/ a full size tripod so that option may work!




Most of these ended up being hand-held and required a lot of squatting! I guess you can say I am getting my workouts! Photography+toning the legs? Can't beat that!

Enjoy!

At The Park Today

I stopped at the park for a little while on the way home today to capture the most beautiful day with a beautiful sky...full of amazing clouds!

I started with some HDR shots with my Nikon 18-200mm VR.

WHen I was here I felt like I was walking throuhg a Fairy Tale!







And then I switched to my Nikon 105mm f/2.8 AF-S Micro Lens to give it a run for it's money!

I'm trying to get the hang of shooting REALLY close with the lens to get that really abstract-y look for flower photography.

The hardest part was focusing on the flowers when the wind kept blowing (Grrrrrrrrr!) AND I was using a tripod! So many were sent to the recycle bin when I got home but these were the ones that I kept that I loved!!

The ones that appealed to me most today were the very abstract flower shots below. I just feel like they would make great abstract art pieces to hang on the wall.







A little more realistic macros for you:





What a beautiful day to be out and about! I need to go back though and keep practiing and practicing these abstract macros. The focus is the hardest part!