Butterfly Beauty

This morning my husband and I were cleaning out our fountain when I saw a swarm of butterflies out an about in our lantana. I sent him to grab the came and then the game was on as to who could capture the best butterfly picture.....I won, when I snapped this one of the Pipevine Swallowtail perched on a lantana flower.

He was close behind with this "honorable mention" of a Hummingbird Moth, which was doing double duty trying to steal his fair share of pollen from the butterflies!

We will be heading out later today to see what type of photographic mischief we can get into as well!

Photographic Smack Down

Ok, so both my daughter and I are enrolled in a digital photography class this summer. We have the same instructor we just take the class on different nights of the week. Our assignment last week was to take two pictures of the following; landscape, portrait, flash, and two of your choice. Two nights before her class, we were outside after our brief (3) minute rain shower. I pointed out to my daughter how water droplets had pooled in the leaves of the caladiums and said “that would make a great photo”. She snapped it and I went right along behind her with my camera doing the same. So, Miss Thing presented her caladium shot to the class on Tuesday night and received “RAVE” reviews from the instructor, along with honorable mentions on her photos of our dogs Lulu & Lexi etc. Last night, I experienced every possible technical difficulty imaginable. When it came time to access, my photos from my thumb drive no photos could be found. Now keep in mind I am a PC girl tried and true and have sum zero experience with a MAC, which is what we are using for these classes. So, I decided to plug in my camera and attempt to retrieve photos from the SD card. Well, you know what the “MAC” would not recognize my camera ‘are you kidding me’. For some unknown reason (must be an Apple thing) I could get it to recognize my camera in the iphoto mode, so I had to import my photos onto the hard drive and then I figured out how to export them back to my thumb drive. So after all my technical glitches and still missing have my photos I did manage to locate the one I had taken of the caladium. So up on the screen it went and this was the response I received. “You know that photo is really nice, but I must say I believe I like the one your daughter took better. The greens and reds just “popped” with her point and shoot” Aaargh! I quickly responded with “You don’t understand we are in the midst of a photo smack down. If I go home and tell her that “her” photo trumped mine I will never be able to fit her head through the doors.” This brought a roar of laughter from the class, who all have some type of “tweener” living within their household be it their son, daughter, sister, brother, niece, nephew etc…they knew exactly what I meant! Alas, I received some kudos on my dew-saturated loropetalum and my candid flash photos of the “dawgs”. Do not worry, I did the right thing and told Miss Thing her picture won out over mine. There was a lot of “oh yes, I am the grand flash master” smack talking going one, but it died down a lot quicker than I anticipated. So we are on to next weeks assignment, which consist of series photos. I can only guess what my child will come up with for that one. In the meantime I am thinking I need to make a stop by the bookstore and pick up a MAC for Dummies book, who knows by the end of this class I may not only be an expert at amateur photography but a master at the MAC as well!

Summer Camps

S U M M E R C A M P

Well, it is that time of year and we are off to a running start! Monday was the 'kick-off' for our daughter, who is attending drama camp in Nashville. It is a two week camp to which she is ferried everyday by her grandmother. Our daughter absolutely loves it and was excited to see her friends from last year and to make a few new ones as well.

In addition to the Nashville drama camp, she is attending a pottery class on Monday evenings. In this (6) week camp she will hone her skills at hand pottery and she will receive an introduction to the pottery wheel and all that it entails.

On Tuesday evenings she is attending a digital photography class. Over the course of the next (6) weeks she will learn how to manipulate the settings for her digital camera and how to take "professional" quality photographs and not amateur snapshots. The instructor is a well seasoned photo journalist, who free lances for no less than (5) newspapers in addition to holding down a full time job as one of the main photographers for the university.

I am taking the adult version of this course on Wednesday evenings. We had to provide her with a 'sample' of our work. I showed my favorite fall photo, which I took when the leaves were in full bloom. I remember this day well as my husband and I were driving up the road, when I announced I wanted him to stop the truck and let me out so I could walk home. I wanted to capture the curve of the road along with all the different colors of the leaves on the trees. It was a beautiful shot in my opinion and I was happy to learn our instructor felt the same. She said it was one of those rare 'perfect' photos, no photo shop or cropping necessary...yipee!

The class liked my barn photo, which I took while chaperoning our daughter's sixth grade camping trip to Land Between the Lakes. They loved the rainbow effect of the sun through the autumn leaves and the tobacco smoke emanating from the barn. Our instructor said it was another fine photo (insert the big head here). I am really looking forward to learning all the professional tricks I can to help me take better pictures. I really like photography and I am absolutely addicted to digital photography as well as this blog!

On Wednesday nights our daughter has her standing guitar lesson bless her instructor's heart! He has patience as he has to put up with the giggling of a pre-teen girl. We will miss him when he graduates and goes on to bigger venues, but for now we are grateful to have such a good instructor!

The summer will include some other camps....scrap booking, tennis, dance, gymnastics and of course cheer camp. All in all she is in for a jam packed summer. Stay tuned for pictures, you know I will take every opportunity I get to snap a photo. Not only will I have lots to show on the blog, but I will be fine tuning my photography skills at the same time!