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!

Made a Stop on the Way Home

Half-way home from work (a camera always in my possesion) I decided to stop at a portion of the D&R Canal (Delaware River) that I pass everyday on my way home from work for a few minutes.

I took a few shots of the canal and some reflections of the trees in the still water:



The think what upset me the most with this photo shoot is the sky. To the human eye it was blue with a few clouds dotting the sky here or there but almost every shot I took at every angle had a blown out sky...it's so frustrating....

No one can seem to figure out how to avoid this issue but I guess the positive is that I pass this canal everyday on the way home so I can re-shoot time and time again but it's just terrible when you get blown skies during a one-chance-only opportunity.

Besides snapping some photos of the canal I walked over to the historic Bridge Tenders Station (circa 1830) that sits beside the bridge that runs over the canal. Next to the Bridge Tenders Station is the Bridge Tender's Garden. I got a good photos of about 4-5 varieties of flowers and a few with large Bumble Bees.





To view more of my waterscape photography click HERE.
To view more of my bug & butterfly photography click HERE.
To view more of my flower photography click HERE.

On the Way Home...

Stopped at the park on the way home from work today to try to capture some butterflies ad flowers.

I was successful in capturing both butterflies and flowers but I was upset that I wasn't able to get there sooner. I had limited time before the sun started to go down behind the trees.

A few from today before it got too dark: