Here or There

i am very ready for there to be green outside of my window, but i'm glad that in the meantime i have some green inside. now i just need it to warm up enough so that i can sit outside for a while and pot some of the baby spider plants ready for a new home.

i really liked the color of these leaves and berries together. this isn't the best shot, but it's not too bad. i love finding bits of color when so much of nature is muted.

i definitely have a thing for reflections. it might be because of the symmetry, or maybe the way the reflection is usually slight different (or very different) from the actual object. regardless, i like reflections.

Valentine's Day is a holiday that people seem to either love or hate, which is a little silly for a holiday about love. I would think a better reason to avoid celebrating the day is that you are not Catholic, but you rarely hear people talking about that.

I think Valentine's Day is nice if you make it that way. It doesn't have to be a commercially dominated holiday. Really, holidays only get like that because people let them.

I'm trying to remember exactly where I was going when I started this, but I can't exactly. Really, the most important thing to let Valentine's Day remind you is that you should let your loved ones know that you love them. So you out there, reading this, I love you!

normally i don't photograph people i don't know. i mean, crowd situations like festivals, concerts, etc. totally don't count because everyone is in everyone else's way. and actually, i'm sure we could think of other examples when i've done it, but that's really not the point here.

the point is that i thought these two teenagers (who sat on this sculpture right when i was walking by) made a pretty cute photo. plus, the gorgeous blue sky was just calling to me.

I forgot the camera was set to black and white from when I took a previous photo. I didn't look too carefully at the camera's screen when I took it and apparently the sun was in my eyes enough that I didn't notice the lack of color. When I figured it out, I assumed the shot would be worthless without the blue sky, but I actually like it like this.

across the yards
Originally uploaded by cathurynn

Snow is so beautiful. I love this morning light.

(Two posts in one day because I'm trying to figure out why Flickr and Blogger are no longer getting along.)

It was late at night when I took this, but it It was so bright outside because the snow and the clouds were reflecting and keeping all of the artificial light. I took these photos without a tripod, although I did steady my hands against the window I was looking through.

The scene looked awesome and strange to the eye, and I think you get a good sense from the photo, which is really what I'm after most of the time.

If someone else had been awake with me, I would have convinced them that we needed to go out for a walk in that quiet white world, but everyone was asleep.

winter sunshine is so necessary to my survival. despite my love of seasonal changes, i can't maintain a love of cold crisp air the whole length of the winter. i'm read for warmth. the sunshine helps tide me over a bit.

in other news, i'm having some troubling computer issues. when your laptop won't charge, it can't be used for long periods of time. and when your laptop is operating as the family's only consistently working computer, it's even less pleasant. i'm off to see about getting it looked at and fixed. cross your fingers that it doesn't cost a million dollars. and i may not be updating here soon, depending on what my computer situation looks like.

computer update: i got it fixed! it was just the power cord, thankfully. it was still expensive for a cord, but it would have been more if something had been wrong with the computer.

i don't know why exactly, but i love love love this photo. it makes me happy. it might be the sun, the slight flare, the tiny leaves, the green... i'm not sure, but i don't need to know why to know that it makes me happy.

When I edit photos, I don't usually go all out. I generally adjust the levels, contrast, and maybe the color balance. My camera is decent and I don't usually feel the need to mess around with the photos tooo much. I almost always correct them a little, but that says more about me than the camera, I think.

So far I haven't gone too far out of the box in terms of editing. Partly it's due to time. Editing takes too long as it is. I don't have something like Lightroom where you can do presets on many images, so it's all me. Sometimes I get into black and white phases and I try everything in black and white to see if I like it better. I haven't yet tried to mess with textures, the current photography trend.

When I went to edit this photo, I was going to do the usual. When I open the levels adjustment, sometimes I hit "auto" just to see what the program does. I rarely keep the auto result, but it can be interesting. This time, the program thought that the grey ice that was under these leaves needed to be a crazy blue, and it upped the contrast quite a bit. The result is something that does not resemble the real life objects, but I like it anyway.

Sometimes my editing program steps out of the box for me.