Lupine and stuff

The other day my coworker told me about all the lupine growing in the field across the street from our offices, and urged me to take pictures. So I stayed late one night and took several of the lupine as well as some other scenes. All of these photos were taken with our office camera, which is a Nikon D700.

(By the way, I thought I had more photos from when I rented the macro lens, but it turns out I'm done with those. Until next time I rent it. :D)

Earlier in the day I had noticed some columbine growing by a coworker's office. I liked the coloring of the wall behind it and asked if I could barge in and take pictures through her window.

And now it's evening. The nice thing about evening photos is that I can practice incorporating flare.

I love evening light! (Who doesn't?) And check out all the little evergreen trees sprouting up.

I went out the following day with better shoes on so I could walk further into the field.

I had a hard time narrowing these down, sorry. I wanted you to get a good idea of what I saw.

Okay no more lupine. Here are some weeds instead!

I have a thing for these more textury types of pictures.

One of the dogwoods at work.

Caw!

The scotch broom is all in bloom, which is what aggravates my allergies the most. So I decided to walk around near it.


Thanks for looking!

Last night I went to the rose garden, so I have several rose pictures I will post one day. I also have some from the iris garden, but am debating whether to post them since they aren't all that exciting. It is exciting to have so many flowers blooming around me, though! And now we've had a bit of rain and we're at our peak of green. How's the weather for you?

Jewelry

I had the opportunity to practice with the macro lens on some jewelry (not mine). Annnnd I don't know what else to say about that. Enjoy.

This moss looks like shag carpet to me. Oh and I got lazy about my watermark on many of these.





It was way too windy outside to place the rings on flowers (I tried), so I had to make due with what we had in the house.



Photographing jewelry is pretty fun--I'd like to try it again with more prop ideas. Some wedding photographers get really creative with their ring shots.

I'll just finish off my California photos here. I had a couple more of this cute type of bug that I wanted to share.

The rose looks kind of like butter.

I love yellow roses! And this one has nice tinges of pink.

Upcoming photo plans: This weekend I may visit Schreiner's Iris Garden up in Keizer. I'm also hoping to catch a poppy field in bloom in the next month, though I'm not exactly sure where it is or when it'll be in bloom. Next weekend I have a portrait shoot that I'm looking forward to. And in July I'm visiting my sisters and their families, so I will hopefully come back with lots of cute nephiece photos.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms reading!

Animal sightings

The other day, after feeling particularly stressed and frustrated at work, I got a text from my coworker who spotted a raccoon in a tree. He was watching it and suggested I grab the camera and meet him over there to get some photos. These are the sorts of projects I LOVE to participate in.

I would say it was strange to see a raccoon out in the middle of the day, but that is when I saw them two other times at work (obviously I'm rarely there at night), so I suppose there are some raccoons who like to be out in the day just as there are humans who like to be awake at night. (What is the opposite of nocturnal, anyway?)

I took way too many pictures, but he kept doing funny things!

I was standing too close for him to feel safe about coming down the tree, at first.

He began to edge his way down. I moved back a little to give him space.

He's looking a little stuck.

Eventually he climbed down, but I think he was a little panicky and jumped back and forth from two trees a couple of times.

He may have been scared, but I thought it was pretty hilarious, and I was happy to catch the jumps on camera. It's all about me.

Finally he jumped to the ground and unknowingly headed toward several more people.

Which meant he went back up into another tree for safety. And then licked his little chops. The end. That raccoon photography excursion really brightened my day and I'm so glad my coworker thought to track me down!

Next on the list: deer. Back when I was renting the macro lens, I went out to take pictures of tiny things and ended up seeing four deer instead.

Mmmm delicious tree.

It looks like he's talking.

And finally: the other day I walked out on my deck just to get some fresh air, and I looked down and saw goslings!

I think I scared them off. Oh well--the important thing is that I got photos!

I still have more macro photos to post, and I've been taking pictures the past couple of days that I'll post eventually, too! Spring is so full of photo opportunities, and I've been trying to take advantage. The only problem is sometimes--between work photography and fun photography--I feel overwhelmed! I have so many pictures to go through and I'm way behind on email and a couple of other things. But it's nice to keep busy and I do love taking pictures. :)

If you'd like to see more photos, feel free to jump over to my sister's blog and check out a senior portrait shoot she did the other day.