Vegas Lights

I just got back from a conference in Las Vegas, where I spent most of my time in classes and workshops.  When I did manage to get outside, I was reminded of how much I miss the desert, especially in the spring.  The sun is warm, the breeze cool, and the air so light I feel as if I could just take a deep breath and fly away.  I wish I'd had more time to explore in the daytime, but was limited to a few snapshots out the window of the car on our way in from the airport.
 

The famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign is a lot smaller in person . . .

Even by day, the casinos offer some interesting images.  And it's not all glitz and glamor.
















We made it to the strip on our last night and got to see lots of lights, people, odd beer containers, shoes with higher heels than I knew existed, and more spouting water than is, strictly speaking, reasonable in a desert.  It was a guilty pleasure - the lights and fountains really are beautiful.  The casinos, on the other hand, are awful.  Take the Bellagio, for example.  It's elegant, sophisticated, and equally full of art, high-end shops, and cigarette smoke.  Even if I still smoked, I'd hate it. Which is sad, because - again - it really is lovely.  Ah, well - I'm glad I've been there and done that, even if I didn't buy a t-shirt.  But I think once was probably enough.

The lights are so overwhelming I didn't even realize I'd shot a tattoo parlor . . .

Statue and fountains at Caesars Palace

Paper fans on the Bellagio ceiling.

The famous Bellagio fountains

Reflections from the ceiling at Harrahs

Light A Candle

 I got a new lens for my birthday - a "nifty-fifty" 50-mm f1.4-2.8 (or something like that).  Its claim to fame is that it's fast with shallow depth of field, and billed as great for indoor portraits (read: baby pics).

A day or two after I got it, I was sitting in bed enjoying the reflections of two candles in various items on our dresser and decided to experiment with the new lens.  Although the auto-focus was tricky, I do like some of the results.

When he looked at them, my husband remarked that I've been taking a lot of pictures of reflections lately.  I agreed without really thinking about why.  The answer is that reflections remind me of the magical doorways-into-other-worlds that characterized my favorite books as a child.  I spent a lot of nights imagining myself finding such a doorway and leaving my everyday world forever.  That thought still has the power to move me deeply, and is at the heart of several other ideas I have.  We'll see how they work out. . .

Stargazing

I don't know the function of the papillae and hairs on the petals,
but they're very cool.

Stargazer lilies are my daughter's favorite flowers. Her husband, Brenden, sent these for Valentine's Day while he's on deployment.  As biological objects, they're almost unbelievable - so big, bright, and elaborate I can -- almost -- more easily believe them to have been designed by a sculptor than by a combination of natural and artificial selection.  I don't have a lot else to say about these gorgeous blossoms.

Everyone who loves lilies knows how messy they get because they produce
large amounts of dark orange pollen.  Look how fuzzy the anthers are, and how velvety the stigma is.

Playing with depth of focus to frame the shadows . . .

The color on the underside of the petals is soft and lovely.

Valentine at the Hermitage

My valentine's gift turned out to be a spring-like afternoon and a few free hours before karate.  I went to the Hermitage, a gorgeous home and grounds on the Lafayette River in Norfolk, VA.  The sun was strong enough to hold its own against a brisk breeze (or wind - sometimes it blew pretty hard) and the afternoon was advanced enough to make for lovely light and shadows.

The lines of this crepe myrtle reminded me of the iconic Lone Cypress at Cypress Point near Monterey, CA - it made me think of the last time I saw it, on a trip with my dear friend Carol.

The tide was low enough to reveal this channel - I don't know if it's visible at high tide.

I feel foolish not knowing the names of these flowers  - but I do  know that I've never seen a leaf impaled quite like this before. 

Before I moved east of the Mississippi, I'd only ever seen yuccas and prickly pears in desert settings.  I'm still disconcerted when I see them thriving elsewhere.  

I was only at the Hermitage for about an hour, but it was the kind of hour that provides grounding and centering for the rest of the day.  Which was good, as life got a little rough on the back end of the day. I'm grateful for this time and for the excuse of the camera to spend it seeing what I might otherwise have missed.

Sno-tography

Leaves in Slush

"Cotton" Boll

 Today was one of those days . . .

For reasons I'm pretty sure I understand and that don't bode particularly ill, I've been having trouble sleeping.  Last night was the first decent night's sleep I've had after 3 bad nights running; not surprisingly, I woke up this morning feeling both rested and groggy.  It had snowed overnight, though, and I thought I had a beautiful lazy day with my daughter and grandson stretching in front of me.

Not so.  Afternoon karate classes were on as scheduled, and, just about as soon as I found that out, the morning exploded into a frantic series of small necessary chores that piled up so quickly I  could hardly breathe.  Groggy gave way to grumpy, which gave way to resigned.

Eventually I stopped feeling sorry for myself, grabbed the camera, and headed outside to see what I could find to shoot in the snow.  It was the perfect first step to clearing my head and brightening my mood.  Sunlight and crisp air do tend to work miracles on me.

Sweetgum Blanket

I didn't get to look at the images until much later.  I wasn't surprised that they weren't entirely successful - I've already started to learn that snow is hard to shoot, plus the light was pretty high overhead.  The cool thing, though, is that the extensive bracketing I was playing with gave me a couple of images that are interesting because of the way the foreground and background elements work together -- even though the foreground images didn't work out the way I was hoping.  

So there's the lesson for today - sometimes you don't find the image - it finds you.  The trick is to recognize the image when you see it.

Perspectives

Curves

Sunny Superbowl Sunday Safari

Shadows on Pyrocantha Berries

 After yesterday's gloom, today's bright sunshine was more than welcome.  Errands and chores kept me busy until the afternoon sunlight was reaching the peak of golden glow-y-ness, at which time I went out to revisit some of the spots where I shot yesterday.

With ample sunshine, I had the opportunity to use lots of different settings and to do lots of bracketing.  Turns out that, at least with this camera, I can get some nice results using the aperature-priority mode and stopping it down as far as I can and still maintain reasonable shutter speed.  So that was fun.

My one disappointment was something I should have anticipated.  I wanted to shoot the lush lichens, mosses, and fungi on our pines now that I had real light to work with.  This biologist forgot, though, that bright sunny days are anathema to those organisms.  Instead of yesterday's miniature rainforests, I got deserts instead.  Everything was withered, flat, and bleached of the rich colors I saw yesterday.

I'm sure there's a deep metaphor in there, about how one person's sunshine is another person's doom, or something.  Whatever.  I just need to keep shooting on the rainy days until the camera and I see eye to eye.

Still Life With Acorn Cap

Leaves

Twining Horizontal

Twining Vertical

Bracket Fungi

Floating Leaves

Reflections in the Parking Lot

 About a week ago, I ordered some actual prints from Snapfish.  I aspire to eventually being able to share some of my work in hard copy, so thought I should check my progress.  Some of my favorite pics of our snow storm came out well.  Most of my favorite shots, though, were just enough out of focus or lacked enough depth of field to sort of lay flat on the page instead of popping off it.  I didn't see the clear, crisp images I thought I was seeing on the computer screen.

I was a little disappointed, but not much, really.  I'm doing all of this for fun, for one thing, and I have learned at least a little bit of patience for another.  Plus, I've barely started practicing in earnest.  The most important lessons for now are that I need (1) to spend more time learning how to work with the semi- and fully automatic modes; (2) a tripod; and (3) a macro extension tube.

Windshield Landscape

Fortunately, I have a birthday coming up to help with the latter two.  Today, having finally kicked a nagging cold to the point where I felt like going outside again, I worked on the first one.  It's another rainy, gloomy day, so it was hard to get enough light to stop down my aperature as much as I wanted to.  But I did use a wider range of settings and got what I think will turn out to be some nice shots when they're printed.

These are just a few representative examples of what I was trying out today. I shot a lot of reflections in puddles of the parking lots.  I like the black-and-white look of them, as well as the geometry of the tree branches.  The Windshield Landscape was just for fun, but came out kind of cool.  The places without water remind me of wide, flat river branches in a rocky riverbed.  And if you look closely, you can see tiny tree reflections in the individual raindrops.

Of course, I also tried lots and lots and lots of pictures of raindrops - still working on getting good depth of field in close-up shots.  These two were the best of the lot.  I really like them both.

Pyrocantha

Raindrops and Thorns