In my tradition, the Christmas Eve supper is the time when the holidays start. So we have been cooking since morning, getting traditional dishes ready for a huge meal. I took a break to photograph Christmas tree, and poinsettia, and all the decorations, when Ace decided to play with me and the camera for this nice Christmas photo.

I was walking in no particular direction, just getting to know the city, when I stumbled upon a bunch of squirrels in Union Square Park. They were rather interested in me, and although watched me carefully, they were not afraid of me or my camera and let me come rather close.

I took this image when we were visiting wineries along Iowa Wine Trail a few weeks ago. I love the contrast between dark, almost monochromatic cat and the bright red barn.

I started to listen to an interesting podcast last week – SCL: Subject, Composition and Light podcast. It is out there for more then a year now, and is accompanied by a blog. The guy started to work on his photographic skills at the same time I did, Christmas 2007, but certainly has more time and is more focused on what he wants from his photographic experience. It is a very interesting podcast to follow, because, although he claims the podcast is for sharing his experience as beginner photographer, from the first episode he is including a lot of interesting comments and suggestions. He also has a Flickr group, and organizes technical challenges and assignments. One of the first was taking an image as from mouse perspective.
I was looking at this photograph of my cat, Ace, and it crossed my mind it is exactly how a mouse would see him.

Have I already mention a trip to Reiman Gardens, this time when the Butterfly Wing was still open and full of butterflies? I put together a gallery of my best images from the trip to this incredible place. Just look at the opening image here, on blog, and try to image the feeling when all those butterflies fly around you. It is very hard to photograph it the way it shows real richness of the experience. See, how many creatures can you find on this image.
I enjoyed photographing the butterflies on those various colorful backgrounds, with shallow depth of field.

It seems next few weeks I am going to post a lot of butterfly photographs. But the Butterfly Wing in Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa, is such an incredible place to visit and photograph. The moment you enter there, notice all the movement around you, the commotion, the colors- it is an incredible feeling.
This photograph of an owl butterfly was so naturally gray, that I did not resist temptation and just removed from view the green color of the leaves in the background, to put stress on the butterfly and its adjustment to its habitat. I actually used Lightroom preset BoonDoggle 2 (I have no idea what it means! I also cannot currently find, where I got this preset from, I did quick check on Google and turned out bunch of forums, but nothing looking like a legitimate link).

It almost doesn’t happen. When I saw Ace, my cat, lay on sofa in a very photographic position, I didn’t really believe I will get a picture. It was rather dark in the evening in our living room. I had to go, take a camera from the shelf, find and put on my fastest prime, and come back. He not only was still there, he let me take a series of photographs, from which I picked the one. With him being black and white, there seem to be no need of color on this image, but I took my time to selectively decrease saturation on the green of quilt, and pink of rose pattern.

I was out on a party yesterday. Believe it or not, on a farm. Very cool place for a party, both for a photographer or just a regular person . I always liked it, anyway. Now I have additional fun, as they have horses, cattle, chickens- all of those are fun to photograph during a “cocktail hour”. Trust it to cow not to move for just below a second altogether .

Just a quickie today. Something fresh from the card. It is getting late, but since I am downloading photos from today’s trip to Southeastern Iowa, organizing and sitting in front of computer anyway, I might as well pick up something and post. I took it while exploring garden in reconstructed old fort in Fort Madison, Iowa.

I am looking through the few shots I took in Davis, California last week. Not enough for a gallery, but I will probably put few on a blog. This is one of my favorites, the way it turned out. It was done towards the evening, but it was still enough light to fool the meter when shooting up in the sky. The effect is a nice silhouetted bird on the silhouette of the tree. Apparently, turkey vultures have a favorite spot in one of the city parks, close to the river, as I was passing them all those times I was out with my hosts and their dogs. I actually turned the shot Greyscale, but there was hardly any color before that!