Halloween Backgrounds

There was more than apples on display at the farmer's market and I took advantage of the opportunity to make other background photos as well. This morning I am sharing a few "Halloween" backgrounds - gourds and pumpkins. While the gourds are not necessarily representative of Halloween, the colours are.

Like the images of apples I shared yesterday, these photos can be used as backgrounds on web sites and printed materials.

Apples

I arrived back in Newfoundland and Labrador late Sunday night. We left the day after Hurricane Igor wreaked havoc on the island portion of our province. Here in Holyrood we had little or no damage unlike towns on the Burin and Bonavista Peninsulas which were devastated. In case you are not aware, the military were called in to help with the clean-up and rebuilding of roads and bridges that were washed out and I think that there are around 900 soldiers on the ground today.

The Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia is famous for its apples and I stopped at a farmer's market to make photographs of apples that could be used for backgrounds. Today's photos show a variety of red apples including: macintosh, honey crisp and gravensteins. Some of the images were taken outside and others were taken inside. Of course we purchased a few of the fresh, delicious apples to bring back to Newfoundland.

Doors

This morning I am sharing photos of Doors that were taken in St. John's. These doors are quite different and range from a simple entrance way to one that is ornate.

I have been photographing doors for several years and have quite a collection. I recently created a Gallery of Doors of St. John's which you may want to check. http://lanephotography.com/st_johns/Doors/st_johns_Doors.htm.

I am going on a photo shoot for a few days so there won't be any Photo of the Day until next Monday or Tuesday.

Puffins

It's been a couple of years since I sent photos of puffins so I thought I would start my new series with images of the official bird of Newfoundland and Labrador. These birds are very interesting and photogenic, especially their colourful odd-shaped beaks. I especially liked the second image because I was photographing a puffin as it flew in to land on the grassy slopes of the nesting sites and I captured it just as it was about to touch down.

These images were taken with my old 70-300 mm lens (not IS) and cropped from the originals to give you a closer view.

Flowers

As with yesterday's photos of the lilies, I also like the colours, shapes and textures in the close-up images I am sharing with you this morning. When you get really close to flowers you can appreciate how intricate, and beautiful, they really are.

As Fall approaches and the colours all around me change for another season I will continue to document the things I see and share some of the images with you. For now I have the photos to remind us of the colours of summer. The interesting images this morning were taken with my 28-80 mm lens and were cropped from original photos.

I have lots more flower photos to share with you and will return to this theme from time to time, but I want to move on for now because I have been sharing photos of plants and flowers for the past few weeks and I don't want to bore anyone, besides a few colourful images will look even more beautiful as winter sets in for another year.

Lilies

This year I planted lilies which only bloomed for a day or two at the most. The flowers were very pretty but didn't last very long. The lilies shown in today's photographs were taken in Wilcox Garden in Brigus in late July. They had several different varieties of lilies growing in their flower gardens.

I used my 28-80 mm lens to make photographs of nearly every variety of flower and plant that were growing there. This lens allowed me to get fairly close to the flowers and since it wasn't too windy, the blooms weren't moving much, making it easier to focus. The very close views were cropped from larger images. I really like the colours, shapes and textures in the macro views of the stamen - the reproductive parts of the lilies.

Sweet Peas

Last Spring I read an article about sweet peas and how they are beautiful and fragrant additions to any flower garden. My plants are flourishing in one of three places in my yard that I decided to plant them - the location with the deepest and best soil - and barely grew in the others. It was a while before they started to bloom, but once they did, they have been beautiful additions to my yard.

Today. I am sharing a few images I made ten days ago. You can see that the colours and shapes of the flowers are beautiful and I can attest that they are very fragrant. I will definitely save seeds form the plants and plant them next year.

Crows

I have mentioned on previous occasions that I have been using Picasa 3 to make new images from photos. A few days ago I saw a crow that was calling out from the top of a nearby tree . Photographing crows is always a challenge but on a dull, cloudy day it was almost impossible. When I made the first image I knew the scene would be dark and the crow would be a silhouette. I tried to get it in focus while it was cawing - I wanted an image with its beak open. Minutes later another crow called out from a different tree and I made a few photos of that one as well.

When I downloaded them I used some special effects to make interesting images. The first image is the original dark image. The second was created from the original using the Graduated Tint Effect in Picasa 3. The third was created using a couple of different effects. I remember creating a similar image in the darkroom when doing my master's degree in the early 80s and that it took nearly a full day to make it. In Picasa, you can make these quickly once you experiment with the Effects a little.

Sunset

Last evening I decided to check the sunset to see if there were clouds to photograph. There were just a few and luckily the sun was setting directly behind them. In the first photo you can see the interesting clouds between the trees in my yard. When I zoomed in, the colours became more brilliant and I liked the textures of the wispy clouds.

This is actually the second official week of my retirement and I am just about finished updating my web site, the first job I assigned to myself. A while back a gentleman on this list informed me that the links on a certain page weren't working and when I checked, he was right! It meant that I had to go through the entire site and make sure the same error had not been copied onto every page. It was a LOT of work and I am just about finished updating the entire site and welcome you to take a look around at your convenience - www.lanephotography.com . If you happen to find a page or link that is not working correctly, feel free to let me know.

Sunset

Last evening I happened to be out with my camera as the sun set and, of course, I made a few images as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. As you can see, the sky was very interesting with several bands of clouds creating interesting shapes and colours.

As I said last week, sunsets with clouds are much more interesting than those without. You can see that when you zoom in on the clouds the colours become richer and deeper.