6/17/12

Missouri Botanical Garden.

A couple of months ago I decided that since it was finally spring and I hadn't had hardly anything to photograph since last autumn, I would go out to the botanical garden and splurge on flower photos. (As you may have guessed, I kind of like photographing flowers)

This will likely be my last post before my trip to North Carolina. I leave super early this coming Saturday morning; we've got the logistics mostly planned out, and my money is safely tucked away. We'll be spending a few days in the Smokies, and then a few days tooling around the Blue Ridge Parkway, seeing sights new and old. My calm tone betrays how fantastically over-excited I am to finally be going back, and with two more camera lenses, several different filters, a tripod, and mo' knowledge. Plus a vow to myself to get those overlook photos at either sunrise or sunset, instead of at high noon with nothing but haze and white sky to photograph. :)

Anyway...flowers.

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6/7/12

LaFayette Square

It felt like it'd been so long since I posted! Well...technically it has been. Almost two months. My apologies.

Last weekend I went to the LaFayette Square Spring Home and Garden event, which they hold every first weekend in June, allowing visitors to tour select homes in the historical district. The homes themselves are unique and beautiful, ranging in style from Second French Empire to Italianate to German Romanesque. Unfortunately you won't see photos of houses in this post, because I'm still deciding what to do with them - architecture photography is not my strong suit. :)

I went with my aunt, who is diligently learning her camera and taking some excellent photos. She's lucky enough to have a Canon 50D with an 18-200mm and a 105mm macro (which takes gawgeous pictures). But I've also fooled her into thinking I know anything about photography, so she asks for pointers and I help out. Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm leading her astray...like saying, 'oh, I never use landscape mode' or 'what? Manual? Nope.' She asked me one time what F-stop to use and I was like.....

*crickets*

(I only manipulate the aperture when photographing waterfalls and the beach. In my defense!)

So, I think actually her queries will lead me to learn the more difficult aspects of photography, since the last thing I want to do is give bunk advice. :-P

On to the photos.

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So there was a vintage baseball game in the park; I was kind of expecting it to be all League of Their Own/The Natural, with everyone in stripes using hay bales to demarcate out-of-bounds with golden light illuminating the tiny buzzing bugs while Copland-esque music swelled...clearly I need to get out more.

And there was jazzy lot outside of a cafe treating the crowd to 40s standards and in general being very mod.

A fun day. :)