To Mountain 3

The first photo this morning was taken looking back towards the lake behind my house. The trail takes me up the side of the first of three hills and I took this photo about half way up the first. The curved tree makes a good rest stop and by the time I reach this point, I am usually breathing very heavily and my heart is pounding, so I take a break here for a few minutes before continuing on. Continuing on, I came out of the woods and looked up the steep cliff from the base of the hill. Even though the area is fairly high above sea level, there are still lots pf plants including the official flower of Newfoundland and Labrador, the pitcher plant, which I photograph often.

To Mountain 2

The trails I follow go through thick trees as well as boggy areas. The first photo shows part of the trail not too far from where I photographed the sheep laurel in yesterday's post. You can see the challenge of making photographs with so much contrast between shadows and bright areas. I usually focus on the brighter areas which causes the shadows to be very dark.

The wild roses growing by the side of of a lake were photographed about 15 minutes into my hike. I was surprised to see them in early July, but this year our Spring and Summer came earlier than normal. The third image shows my destination (the peak between the two trees) once again - taken about one-half the way there.

To the Mountain

Today I will start a virtual tour of a hike to the Inside Hawke Hills behind my house in Holyrood. Even though it isn't a long distance, it is uphill all the way and getting there is a good workout. My purpose of sharing this series is to let you see what I saw on one hike in July, 2009. I have walked this trail hundreds of times and one would think that I wouldn't see anything new to take photos of, but I take my camera every time and always find photographic subjects.

The first photo shows my destination - the hills between the trees - taken in the two minutes into my hike. The second shows the path that passes by a bunch of sheep laurel. Of course, I couldn't pass the bright pinkish flowers without making a few images.

Food Backgrounds 4

This will be the last of my food background series for a while. I will definitely return to this theme again because I know many of you are really enjoying it. Today I chose desserts again because most people like desserts!

You can probably see that I used a flash to capture these images - they were taken at an event in a gymnasium with low lighting. There were 50 different, delicious desserts and it was too bad I couldn't try them all because they all looked so good!

Feel free to search my Blog for more food photos. I also uploaded a web site with 30 photos of food backgrounds at: http://www.lanephotography.com/abstracts/backgrounds/backgrounds_1.htm

Food Backgrounds

The food photos have been making several of you hungry so I am sharing a few dessert backgrounds this morning. The fresh blueberries on top of a blueberry cheesecake looked delicious as did the selection of cookies and cakes. Enjoy!

More food backgrounds at: http://www.lanephotography.com/abstracts/backgrounds/backgrounds_1.htm

Food Backgrounds 2

As requested, more food photos today! The cauliflower was part of a vegetable tray and I left a little greenery in the image, but it could have easily been cropped out. The salads were in large bowls and I was able to zoom in to eliminate the edge of the bowls. My wife's bread homemade always makes a good photographic subject.

Food Backgrounds

I am creating a series of Food Backgrounds, five of which I am sharing with you today. Whenever there is an event with trays of food, I try to photograph them before people start to eat. I have many images which would make interesting backgrounds for presentations or articles about food, nutrition and/or health. When making backgrounds, I try to crop distractions such as the edges of baskets or bowls or large spaces without food. Cropping with the camera is easier, but to avoid contamination, I try not to get too close to the food while photographing it.

I planted, cared for, harvested and photographed the green peas just before freezing them. I cropped the cheese images from larger photos which had different types of cheeses. I zoomed in on the orange slices but wanted to leave hints of other types of fruit. I can crop closer if I wanted only the oranges. The same comments would apply to the watermelon image.

Technology

Today I chose to share photos of a 3.5" hard drive that had crashed at work. A friend suggested that I take it apart to see what it looked like - It was very shiny and there was not one spot of dust on it at first. Within minutes, there were numerous specks of dust so I decided to make a few photos of it right away and am sharing 3 of them with you today.

I photographed the hard drive on a windowsill that provided lots of daylight. The first three photos are the same image that was cropped from its original but the lighting made the images look black and white. I added a tint to the second and third images using Picasa 3.5 from Google. To make the last photo I shot straight down and could easily see my reflection on the shiny platter. If you look closely you can see specks of dust.

Moose

Yesterday I looked outside and saw a couple of moose eating trees along the side of my driveway. I think it is the same mother and calf that have been hanging around here all summer. I am sharing the photos this morning because I wanted to let you know that they have survived a month into the hunting season.

The moose were around 200 feet from the house and since it was a dull morning, I set the ISO to 400. When I looked at the images, most were blurry and they may have been better if I had used an ISO of 800 or 1600.

Pigs

Lester's Farm in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador provides an outing for kids to explore pumpkin and corn fields as well as feed common farm animals. Today's photos of a pig eating lettuce were taken there on a cold, fall day a couple of weeks ago. When I photograph caged animals I try not including the cage, but it was impossible in this instance.

These photos remind me of visiting one of my uncles who used to raise pigs when I was a young boy. It brings back fond memories of feeding them food scraps. I remember being amazed that they would eat just about anything.