As the title says, here are a few little bits of beauty I have noticed and photographed in the last few weeks. Sometimes we can get so much from just stopping and enjoying the beautiful things around us instead of always rushing past to wherever we are going. 

Of course I write this to myself just as much as anyone. This though is one good thing about photography, you have to stop and look around and sometimes even seek out the beautiful things God has here for us to enjoy. Look around and make sure you don't miss out the beautiful things he sends you each day, because you forget to look and really see.

 What lovely things have happened in your life recently?

When did you last notice and thank God for the flowers he sends you?

We have new life in our saviour! What a blessed day, the day we remember how he defeated death. Easter is just a wonderful time of the year. It is also an excuse to take photos (not that I need excuses), so I did an Easter photo shoot of my littlest sister the other evening and she is just the cutest ever so I had to share the photos. 

I did a photo shoot of Ann last Easter with the same basket of chalk eggs, and since those eggs had survived a whole year without being used I decided we better do it again you can see last years post here. My photography and editing has improved since then. And of course I rarely took photos in RAW then, but all these were taken in RAW before I edited them and saved them as jpg. files. Sorry about all that technical talk for those of you who do not understand such things. You may now scroll down and enjoy the photos.

And for anyone who is interested in the photography side (technical talk) of these photos, as I said I took them all in RAW and then edited them in Lightroom. In these two last shots you can see the original shot in the corner and how it turned out after editing. 

You may have noticed that I took nearly all these photos with the camera facing towards the sun which would probably be a mistake if I was not taking them in RAW. But in a RAW file there is such a great range of information and I could bring back as much light as I wanted, and fix up the white balance to be nice and warm. And in this next shot actually make it look a bit hazy. RAW files always need editing, but the final result is so much better and they are much easier to edit without loosing any information than jpg. files are.

The main edits I have done to all these images were adding exposure, some to the whole photo and other parts just over Ann, also adding a little contrast and obviously sharpening them, as all RAW files need to be sharpened at least a little. Anyway I hope you enjoyed those photos, happy Easter!

Does your family have any Easter tradition?

Have you ever tried taking photos in RAW? or do you always shoot jpg. If you have not tried it you seriously should!

I realized the other day that I have not done a 'crafty' post in ages, but then I have not really made as much this year as other years either. A week ago I made these little fellows, and took some photos of the process. So here is how I made and how to make a little owl on a stump.

I bought a new lens for my camera the other week and I am so happy with it. To be exact it is a "Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS USM Lens" It rained the first few days after I got it, but finally the sun came out, as did all the spring flowers. I took Ann for a walk up the road.... and did a photo shoot of a kind, and got some smiles. (even though she was not in the best mood)

That title.... well maybe I should have stuck with "Of Photos of flowers" or "Of Flower Photos"... Something does not sound right with it, oh well. I can't be bothered with changing the photo, so concerning photos of flowers.... This is another post where you can see how different my photos are now, to what they were years ago, and read my critiquing of my past self (or past photographs anyway). Although back then I did occasionally fluke onto a photo I still like now. As with the photo heading this post, I took that back in 2007. 

 Green and gold light speckling the grass. Vibrantly green buffalo grass, a lawn. Birds call, ever so softly from every side. The grass is soft against your back, for a while. Your checked, long sleeve shirt and jeans stop the grass from itching its way to your skin. Trees block out the suns glare. The leaves above rattle and click in the slight wind. Secrets are whispered from air to tree that travel down into the earth. 

Past the branches and leaves fluffy, white clouds float in the blue sky. The leaves shake with gladness. Soft music plays. All is beautiful.

Eventually you realize your head is lower than your feet because of the slight incline of the lawn. The grass has found a way through your shirt to itch your back. So you shift over and lean against a rock, it is rough and cool, but comfortable. Where you lie is actually a tamed ridge line. Rocks, like the one you lean against poke  up like breaching wales from the green lawn. Rocks of a volcanic sort. The one you lean against sucks warmth from your back. The breeze is almost cold. 

Insects are on the move around you. Ants trail up a tree, bees fly around and around a mosquito hums. Which in the end destroys it all because in this life nothing is quite perfect, not for long. But we have assurance, that one day, we will be brought home. To a perfect home, the perfect home, the perfect place, perfect for eternity.

For taking a photo like this you need a lot of magic dust and the skill to capture the shot as the stars explode..... Ok I hope you didn't believe that. Actually it is called bokeh and is pronounced Bo-Ke (Bo as in bow and arrows bow, and Ke as in kettle.) I have always liked the normal bokeh effect and have posted lots of photos of it in the past but that was normal bokeh. This is christmasy (and apparently christmasy is not a word but that is not stopping me from using it!)

Bokeh can be any shape at all, everything... the shape depends on what shape you cut. I have made three shapes a star, a heart and a Christmas tree. All you need is a piece of cardboard which can be white or black but I would recommend black.... as every other person I have heard of does.... and I just had to go make a white one to find out why not use a white one.... I found out. White cardboard works but it also gives the whole photo a slightly whiter look... a more over exposed or speckledy white... but without it actually being overexposed.... So it turns our that black cardboard is better. 

As to why it does that, well it just does and here is Google's definition;

"All you need to know is that bokeh is the aesthetic quality of out-of-focus blur in a photograph. If you'd like a more technical definition, Nikon described bokeh as "the effect of a soft out-of-focus background that you get when shooting a subject, using a fast lens, at the widest aperture, such as f/2.8 or wider"."

If you can't understand that then an even more technical definition would be even more impossible to understand.... especially since I would be explaining something that I don't exactly understand. It shall just have to be enough that bokeh does happen.

As to how do I change it from circles to stars or whatever. I cut a circle of cardboard the same size as the end of my lens and then cut the desired shape inside it. While taking these photos I had the cardboard held onto the end of my lens, simple as really. 

But not all cameras can do it... only one of my lenses can... the one that can get the really big aperture f/1.8. 

I took all these photos early in the morning after it had rained so there were lots of "highlights" in the background and foreground. All the bright spots that are not in focus turn into the stars or whatever shape. So water drops with the early morning sun glinting off them are perfect to give a lovely bokeh effect. Or of course if you can catch a trail of a unicorn as it gallops past, because everyone knows they leave stars in glints of magic light in their path.

The bokeh in this photo really changes it from a pretty ordinary shot into something a lot more interesting. So keep your magic dust handy and watch out for unicorn trails.