A Look at Nature

I took a lot of really cute photos of Little Man yesterday when we went to Build-A-Bear that you can find on my other blog. But, today I spent some time shooting a few nature shots around what little bit of yard area we have. I shot all of these, again, in the "Aperature" mode and edited them using paint.net and the layering effect. {I was super amazed at easy and effective it was! If you've never edited using layers, The Pioneer Woman has a great tutorial here.} I tried out a few different layering techniques, and these were some of my favorites...

I have mixed feeling about how I feel about the branch protruding from the top of the flower...in a way, I lilke the effect it gives, but I wish I would have had it a little more in focus. I like the darker background. It makes the colors in the flower really stand out. And I would have like the center part of the flower to have been more in focus than it is.

I liked this because it gave a whole different color scheme than the first photo did.

It wasn't dark when I took this...it wasn't even sunset yet. I was just able to capture the sun coming through the clouds and then use layering, again, to darken the trees to add emphasis on the sky behind it. Loved the way this one turned out.

Just a little something from me to you on Valentines Day :)

This was just one I was playing with the get the whole "black & white photo with color enhancing" thing down...I'm really more partial to the original photo:

With this one, I was able to capture the shadows of the candle-light without even using the flash...love the way the light is shining on the photo just enough to see the picture.

Anywho. That will be all for tonight. We're heading to the park and the beach tomorrow afternoon, so I'm hoping to have a few silhouette pictures for you...and some killer sunset photos.