I think I am getting good at it. All right, it is very local, but hey, I won that contest. Again. The winner was one of the photos I took during my night session around town. It was not a very interesting image in color, because whatever was not directly lit by the orange street light, was dark, almost black. Turning it black and white added some timeless feeling to the image. I added Matt Kloskowski’s preset , and then the fun with sliders started. And this time, I printed at home, which turned out to be pretty simple. It probably means I am not realizing something . Altogether- a success.

This is another of photos I took in Reiman Gardens, in their conservatory indoor green house. I like how the bright sun light, coming from behind the leaves, creates unusual effect. I believe these are “stained glass” begonias. I learned my lesson hard on names for plants (and animals as well). I did not take a notes or photos of labels, and now each time I am posting, I need an extensive research on Google .

The fact that the apparent name of the bird is not very popular in Google, and the first hit is the Blank Park Zoo web page, makes me think it may have another, more scientific or established name. Any suggestions?
Either way,the bird’s silhouette was just exquisite. The shape it created, I just loved it. It it was freezing after it moved, which was taking a photograph easy.

My-oh-my, it took me about a minute to find a photo for today’s post, and 31 min to find an English name of this plant. Probably because the only other name I know is not biological, but very popular common name. Almost exact translation, but how could I know that… For those who care- the formal name is Brugmansia. What I like about the image is how to colors interact between green leaves and yellow flowers. And small pieces of blue sky.

This little guy was trying to run away from us in Reiman Gardens, somewhere around Maze Gardens. We stopped instantly, not to scare him any further. Encouraged, he stopped and started cleaning himself. I took about 15 photographs before we all got bored and chipmunk was back on his way wherever it is chipmunks go. This was by far the cutest.

Although there is not much going on on the outdoors part of Reiman Gardens, as spring just seems to be slowly coming, but luckily there is richness of plants in the indoors conservatory. We spent there quite a while, considering how small the area is. I particularly like this picture, just simple shapes of lanes and a bit of color.

I tried HDR again. I did it in Aperture Priority mode, using Exposure Compensation to switch between settings. Mostly to see if it works . I had the day to try working a lot with this button. My luck, my trial version of Photomatix is still operational, so I could used it (sight of relief, when it actually started). I also tried to add the Edit in Photomatix option to Lightroom, it I found curious thing. The alignment works if I open pics in Photomatix, but when I open them as Edit in Photomatix from Lightroom, it just cannot do it right. Hmmm. Some underlying trick I don’t get, I suppose. I went the long way, and ended up with my the most natural looking HDR yet. On the geographical note, it is a main building of Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa, famous for its buterfly greenhouse (openieng each year in spring).

I had a very photographic day today. We made a trip to Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa and to Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa. To use great early spring weather (read 80F) and shoot photos (or movies, depending on person). I made almost 300 pics, and after cleaning, about half of it stayed. I am looking at the remaining 1500 pics, and I see what a progress I made since last December, when I really got in photography. Yes, I was taking pictures before, but these were snapshots, and I almost couldn’t take sharp picture. I am really pleased with myself today.

Today’s post photo is of a lion. Probably nothing extraordinary about that one, just one insider joke. It looks just like my cat Ace on the egde of our sofa in the living room. Just a bit scaled…

I took this photograph last week. I went to try to get the moon over the town for the local photo contest. I turned out that my orientation is not good enough, moon turned out to rise exactly opposite where I wanted. Instead over town, it showed up behind me and behind the hill. Took me a bit by surprise, but at least I noticed before I froze . Anyway, making the best out of the situation, I shoot this photo and I really like the silhouettes of tress and moon shining behind them.

All right, a break from food. I was shooting few times last week, with beautiful weather outside, so I have some nature stuff to show off as well. How about… some fungus. We have been walking on a nature trail on weekend, shooting still and moving pictures, and these were just asking for some close ups. I decided to turn it into duo tone for two reasons. First, the color of tree and the background was rather destructing and I really wanted to isolate the fungi. Also, the black and white just wouldn’t do it, I wanted to preserve the brownish tone of the image.