Reserved

Reserved: Coneflower Blossom Winter Garden

1/16 Photography Reserved

Booked / Set Aside / Taken

A single coneflower plant was left standing in my front garden purposely for all of the reasons on today's photo.  I was all over the place with this prompt, went to Pinterest for inspiration, took a few self portraits which I hated to do (some badly, some funny) and played with my new macro filters outside.  A call to my mother helped me to pick the picture for the day when she told me to look up the definition of reserve. Once I read the definition, I remembered that the coneflower that I took about 10 shots was left in the garden when everything was cut back this fall to answer all the questions on the above photo. Thanks Mom!

I am taking an on-line Photoshop Elements class at The Perfect Picture School of Photography and the photo for today gave me the opportunity to use canvas resizing. The only editing I did for this picture was during the RAW processing of the photo. The snow was a great background for the flower. 

Here were some of the other winter flower shots that I took today. The detail is good with the close up lenses, but I still need to practice as I feel like I am right on top of the flowers to get these shots.

Now for the silly pictures of the morning. I hate taking "selfie" pictures, actually, I have a hard time being the subject of any photo. One of the suggestions for today's prompt was "to add a little whimsy to your project to keep it fresh and fun."  The first couple of photos were done in the front yard with our Christmas tree that we put out for the birds. What I am not showing are the shots of me walking while the timer was going off. At least I caught the tree growing out of my head. These shots were fun, but not my best.

Then I tried for some timer shots with the camera on a small "gorilla" tripod, since I was too lazy to get my big tripod out. That was an epic fail with many shots of me from my nose down.

And finally, I broke down and took the obligatory photographer in the mirror shot. After I cleaned off the toothpaste spatter, thank you son, I had some fun. I kind of like this one.

The header for the blog was just a trial last night and I promise it will be much better after I learn more from the class. I am not happy with how it turned out. 

 If I ever start working again, my picture taking will be greatly reduced. Not tomorrow though, off to the flume for a winter hike and then we are checking out the Ice Castle in Lincoln at dusk.