Merry Christmas!  Hopefully the snow isn't causing you too many problems preparing for the festivities at the end of the week.

Well the snow has certainly given me a chance to practice my snow and ice  photography :)  Here are a few examples of some scenes from the garden.

  

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!
Susan
xx

Alien plant

Our grass is now a bog land and everything is looking very bare except for the berries which the birds are flocking too.  Have some tidying still to do in the garden but there is one main task outstanding which we keep trying to put out of our minds.  The removal of a certain plant, the monkshood!  

I wouldn't have dreamed about taking this plant out last year, beautiful strange blue flowers which are perfect for taking photos.  The bumblebees just adore them but I could never quite get that perfect bumblebee/monkshood shot, maybe this year!  I eagerly watched the plant start to grow again, waiting for the buds to appear when I discovered, while flicking through a herb book, that the monkshood is a very poisonous plant.  Deadly if ingested.  Some people have it at the back of a garden out of reach but ours is at the very front of the plant border and having a small child made the risk too much.  So it has been fenced of waiting for it to start dying back and then a sad but relieved goodbye.  

Here is one of the pictures that I have taken but alas still no bumblebee/monkshood shot!

Susan

xx

    

Strange looking fungi!

My little girl and I were out in the garden yesterday looking at fungi when she suddenly leaped back looking slightly concerned.  It turns out that the strange green fungi she had spotted in the grass, and decided to touch,  took offense at this intrusion and hopped forward.  Trying not to laugh, but failing miserably, I finally convinced her that the frog got more of a fright than she did!

We are very lucky in that we have had many visits from frogs in the garden and here are some of my many shots from the ones that visited our pond.

They are great characters and some just can't resist the camera.

Susan xx

Foxgloves

Hello!  I wish I could say that I have been busy taken pictures this week but the weather has once again been conspiring against me.  I am now thinking about taken my photography in a new direction - wet, soggy and windswept photography!
Instead I  have been working on some of the images that I have taken during the year and this week it has been the turn of the foxglove.  I had two rather sorry looking foxgloves hiding at the back of the garden with only a few flowers having emerged on both plants but this made me concentrate on a close up view of two flowers rather than going for the whole plant.  I also went for a more grainy feel.  

The images differ slightly in the orientation.  I prefer the top image myself but please let me know what you think.

Have a good weekend.

Susan

Daisy, daisy

Time seems to have flown by this week but thankfully I have found some time tonight to add a new post.  These images are two different types of daisy's that I have had growing in the garden over the summer.  I love the daisy as they always seems to brighten up a garden.

Out of the two images which one do you prefer?  Also, in the last two post I have left out the camera information regarding the images, do you prefer to see this information or prefer just the images?

Have a lovely weekend.

Susan

The secret of the peony rose

These beautiful flowers were given to me by my fabby friend Susie and her family when they came to visit one weekend.  I couldn't wait to get my camera set up to take them and early the next morning managed to get a spare few moments to take some images.  The colours are so rich and I found the resulting images  had a sensual feels to them.  Normally I don't pay much attention to peony roses as they are always drooping, being so top heavy, but will definitely be having a closer next time.

  

I like all three images but the bottom image has that slight edge over the other two.  Let me know what you  think.
Susan

Beautiful Scene

As it has been such a miserable day today I thought I would go with one of the pictures I took in July where rain definitely did not feature.  I planted a packet of wildflower seeds in a small patch of my garden and the results have been spectacular.   They are continuing to flower even now, although I think the wind and the rain of today will have destroyed a few! 

Aperture f4
Shutter speed 1/320s
Focal Length 100mm (macro)
ISO 400
Canon 20D

Hope this image bring a little sunshine into a horrible day.

Susan

Thank you

Thank you all for your comments, they are very much appreciated.  I'm really glad now that I didn't continue procrastinating :)  A special thanks to my wonderful, amazing best friend Susie for putting a link on her blog.
Nice to hear from you Clare :)  Time has certainly flown by since we last met up, can't believe it has been 10 years!   Hopefully with the power of Paypal I will be able to accept orders via the blog and, fingers crossed,  will soon have a folksy shop.
Well its time for a wee cup of tea now.
Back soon with hopefully another couple of images.
Susan

WELCOME!

Well I have finally put the procrastinating to one side and taken the plunge, my first post!

As its my first post I initially thought I would take things slowly and only put up one of my images but now I am finally on the blog I decided just to go for it!

Beautiful Echinacea
Below are some pictures I have taken of an Echinacea:

Echinacea (Portrait 1)

Aperture f/11
Shutter speed 1/3s
Focal length 100mm (macro)
ISO 100
Canon 20D

Echinacea (Portrait 2)

Aperture f/11
Shutter speed 1/3s
Focal length 100mm (macro)
ISO 100
Canon 20D

Echinacea

Aperture f/2.8
Shutter speed 1/100s
Focal length 100mm (macro)
ISO 100
Canon 20D

Echinacea

As above but image resized for a square format.

I would be interested in your thoughts for the above images especially what portrait you prefer and what format suits the last image, the original rectangle or the reformatted square.

Thank you for visiting and hope to see you again.

Susan