Down by the river.

I wanted to get some photos of the morning light down by the river but the weather wasn't all that cooperative and the sun came out from behind the clouds for about 10 minutes and then disappeared.

In about the first two minutes I took this shot and then the sunlight started to fade...

In the last of the glowy golden morning light I took this shot, not very extraordinary in any sense and my goodness the water looks so muddy in that light but I haven't managed to get any photos of the swans that live by the river so I was quite pleased that this one decided to make an appearance when I had my camera with me.

With the sky all overcast I decided to leave it at that and go back to the car...crossing over the river I noticed there were all these swallows swooping around me and diving close to the river...so I amped up the shutter speed and attempted to get a shot of them...in addition to a great many shots of blurred splots that were vaguely birdshaped and lots of empty frames with no sign of the bird that I was attempting to follow I decided to just focus on the river and wait...after quite a wait I was so pleased that I managed to get this shot with not one but two little swallows swooping over the river!

And of course I can't go a weekend without an attempted macro flower shot of some sort...I was quite happy that I managed to clone out some ugly little bugs that were sitting on these tiny little white flowers. I think I'm getting better at cloning!

Getting away from all my recent nature shots for something a bit different I went for a walk in the afternoon with my camera and came across this little cat that I immediately dubbed 'angry cat' I'm sure you can see why!

So that's my photo wrap for this week...nothing spectacular but I feel good that I'm getting my camera out more and taking some photos - no matter how random!

Some golden morning light.

I'm really happy with my shots for this week! I got up at 6:30am yesterday so I could catch the golden time just as the sun rose, I'm so glad I did because by 7am the light was completely different and I don't think these shots would have worked out as well.

The first thing I came across yesterday were weeds. Not that interesting a subject that's for sure but I think that golden morning light can make just about anything look pretty...

So I took this shot of some random grass seed weedy thing.

And then I took this shot of of some different grass seed weedy type things.

And then I found some flowers in a nearby garden.

Then the light started to change so I thought I'd try something Clara suggested with blocking the sun with the subject...had some major oh-crap-I-think-I've-gone-blind moments trying to line up this shot but I think it turned out okay for a first attempt. For the record this tree was a bit too tall to make shooting the flowers easy so I was on tiptoe half climbing/leaning through the tree to try and get in line with the sun!

Oh and Clara said that I should try and clone out the jetty from last week's shot of Luka so here's that shot with my first attempt with the cloning brush.

Luka and Molly and sunlight.

Okay so I've slacked off a bit this week and haven't taken any new photos but I have at least processed the photos that I hadn't gotten around to last weekend...I will make sure I get the camera out and take some new shots this week!

This was taken on a beach walk last weekend...I know I'm biased but I think Luka is just soooo handsome! I was also pleased that I managed to successfully use the healing brush to get rid of Mike's foot which was in the corner of the photo. Yay for photoshop!

Now this one of Molly was taken on the same day as my previous sunflare attempt with Luka. Just a happy snap of my girl more than anything...Molly's recently decided that playing with her multicoloured stuffed toy is one of her favourite things. She runs about like a crazy thing flinging it all over the place...you wouldn't believe that she's 10 years old the way she carries on.

Here is another attempt at sunflare...I think mainly I achieved mega haziness and eye watering partial blindness!....but at least it's a prettier subject than my previous tree/sunflare shot!

And then I decided to take this macro shot as well...probably should have stopped down to get better DOF but ah well...it still looks pretty to me. And I used the selective colour adjustment that Clara told me about for the first time. Yay for photoshop again! And big thanks to Clara for walking me through that. I'm learning more all the time.