We took a short walk around our neighborhood. Overnight, although it was not snowing, I think, the tress got covered in snow, so it was white not only on the ground, but also wherever you looked. Quite beautiful, indeed. This macro Lensbaby shot of the large snow flakes covered rope along snowmobile trail is my favorite of the day.
BTW, interesting tidbit in here, looks like yesterday all states but Hawaii were snow-covered.

The winter in Iowa keeps us well locked at home so far, with temperatures in single digits and wind chill below 0F. We took it as a great chance to work on some fun studio projects. It seems like last couple of weeks we hardly left our “finished basement” . Now, with two Nikon Speed lights, our food photography went on completely new level. We took some “strait” shots, and moved to some fun with macro filters on Lensbaby. I just love the results.

I guess it is high time to reveal the secret of the abstract photo from this post. Regine, you were very close, the picture shows a window. It was actually a row of keyhole shaped windows in the hall of African Mammals in American Museum of Natural History in New York. The tree like shape on the window comes from shades made from wicker, thus it might make you think of a tree.
Here is another view of the windows. I was photographing from dark inside of the room to the bright midday outside, thus the windows are only silhouettes, blurred in corners by Lensbaby (right again, Regine!).
Next post is number 400. Who would think….

This past weekend, my husband mainly, but me some as well, put a lot of work in organizing the galleries on my blog. We created a separate page, where all Monday Galleries can be browsed, and you can click on the image to open a gallery and view all the images in there. I am going to be adding new galleries I publish on the blog right there as well. He also did this wonderful changing header. Thanks!
On the occasion, I realized that I have some galleries in the folder which were not linked to blog posts, and decided to publish at least some of them. Today’s gallery was made last spring, in a Mexican restaurant in Cedar Rapids, where I went with a friend of mine, who was takings shots for a menu. When he was busy photographing his assignment, I was shooting from the side with my Lensbaby. I did some additional editing today, before publishing this gallery- after all, I learned some more about post-processing in last 9 months .

It is a contest photo today. A simple question- what is on the image in today’s post? The first person who leaves the right answer as a comment on this blog, will win a 10×15″ print of choice mounted on matboard, signed and dated. Delivery in the continental US only . You can choose from any of this year blog posts an/or galleries.

To post or not to post? Busy and stressful day, and I couldn’t make up my mind the whole evening. Then I just did few adjustments on the image and I think I will get it out, after all. Just the colors matter here, to contrast the snow falling outside and wind chill.

Last weekend, bored with 4th day of weekend, and not willing to go outside due to wind chill, we decided to finally visit the Antique Car Museum in next town. I guess Tomasz mentioned it on his post few days ago. Although there was a lot of interesting cars (and wagons) in there, seemed like all the exhibits were tightly stuffed into too small space. Not a great place for wide shots, but certainly fun for hours of details. A bit dark, though, and as we left our flash in the car, it was hard to take a sharp image. Some of them turned out OK, though, and it is just one of few of my favorites.

I was in the mood just to photograph something. I wasn’t sure what, I wanted it to be reasonably small (as opposed to landscape ) and colorful. Which I could photograph from a distance and from up close. It was actually Tomasz who came up with idea of buying some apples, next time we did shopping. So we did. We bought two apples out of each variety in the store . I am sure the woman at the register did not appreciate it much. Anyway, I took some photos with my universal zoom 18-200 mm, and decided to play with macro filters on Lensbaby. I just loved the images when I opened them in Lightroom.

There seem to be one thing I can photograph with Lensbaby- airplanes. That probably has something to do with my favorite subjects vs technical limitations. Somehow, the landscapes do not look that appealing when I photograph them with Lensbaby, and airplanes are just about the only “solid” item I tend to photograph. Probably because Tomasz is fascinated with flying, and we are spending more time on assorted flying events then foe example car events.
In either case- the blog photo I took last weekend during Pumpkin Splat on Green Castle airfield. Looks like a have a theme this week .

I took this image in passing, in the hall of Reiman Garden. I was waiting for the rest of the party to check out the Souvenir Shop. It is a very simple image. But I just love those contrasting colors, the green leaves and the orange wall behind it with blue reflections of sky through the window.