Day and Night

Delicate flowers bloom on the donut peach tree in my backyard, the official mark of the start of spring:
(All taken with my meager point-and-shoot Sony Cybershot. Click for full-sized photos.)

Just before sunset, slanted rays pass over the rooftop, casting intricate shadows across the petals.

The dainty flowers set against a seemingly two-dimensional dusk sky.

Within weeks this lovely tree will shed its petals to make way for fuzzy little peaches.

Happy spring!
jennie

Almost Spring

Something about photographing flowers really appeals to me. A few days ago, I was at Home Depot buying light bulbs when I began to gravitate towards the pretty flowers...

The rest are from my backyard:

I'm definitely more of a winter person-- flowers, iced lattes, and summer vacation are pretty much the only three blessings that come with warm weather.


jennie

Spotless

Spring has arrived in my backyard in the form of budding leaves, blooming daffodils, and these little red insects. At this time every year, ladybugs begin appearing throughout the vegetable garden, their predatory feeding habits sweeping it clean of pesky aphids. Oh how I wish my camera had more powerful macro functions.

I played around with Picnik, my favorite [free] online photo editing application, and made my mediocre photos look somewhat acceptable. Picnik offers a wide array of functions, ranging from the basics (auto-fix, crop, sharpen, etc.) to fancier options (heat map, night vision, vignette, neon, etc.) to text/frame/sticker add-ons. Picnik's digital cross processing (used in photos 1 and 3), lends a glowy, sunlit effect to photos-- a little bit hazy like a vintage photo, but without washed-out colors. As for a friendly user interface, Picnik also displays the cutest messages while loading: warming breeze, fluffing clouds, coloring flowers, growing grass... Although it may not be very professional, I highly recommend this application for any basic photo editing endeavors.