Meow, and don't you dare criticize my appearance...

For the first day of spring, here's a photo taken last evening...

And, here it is with the swirl effect applied...

There's not much sign of spring around here.  There was a robin chirping this morning for the first time though I haven't seen him or her yet.

  

In honor of what is hopefully the end of a long winter, here is one of the last snowy scenes I photographed this season.

The weather is warming up a little providing a better chance to spend more time outdoors with the camera.  Melting snow is not very photogenic so I aimed the lens upwards...

This morning, thanks to the arrival of daylight savings time, I was up earlier and witnessed a gorgeous sunrise sky.

  

First it looked like this...

  

And, a couple of minutes later it looked like this...

And, a couple of minutes or so after that, the colors were mostly gone.  So often, opportunities last for such a short time.

Am dusting off the blogging hobby again today.  Haven't taken many photos lately because its just too darn cold out, but here's one I snapped recently...

Decided to try this effect on it...

And, this one...

A fun way to pass some time on a winter day.

Here's another photo from last summer.

We took a trip to the shores of Lake Superior last summer.  

Of course, I took many photos.  

This is one of them.

I like the variety of textures in this scene---water, flowers, and rock.

Here's a drive-by photo I took last summer.  

Its good therapy for winteritis.  

Here's another version of the photo in the previous post.  I was trying out some viewfinder add-ons and kind of liked this one.

Here is another of the drive-by photos I took the other day.  

It was fun to add the Polaroid-look frame.

We had a Polaroid camera for awhile when I was a kid.  It was quite a novelty.  Too bad the film was so expensive.

Yesterday my husband sent me on an errand.  I managed to remember to take a camera along for some drive-by photos.  Out of the many shots I snapped only one or two were good enough to keep.  This one didn't look that great at first, but after some cropping and editing of exposure, color, texture,  I was happy with the results.   

I didn't cut off the tops of the trees, they were that way in the original photo.  Drive-by photos are often like that since if you're the driver you have to aim the camera without looking.  You get what you get and its a fun challenge to see what you can do with the often very imperfect photo scenes.  

Wow, its been a long time since I've done a blogpost. 

Let's see if I can remember how to post a photo.

Yup, here's one:

This scene is a drive-by shot taken last fall.  I lightened it a little to bring out the highlights that were compliments of the late afternoon or early evening sun.  Why did I choose this photo?  No reason except for the fact that I like it.  I'm not even sure where it was taken.

I haven't been taking many photos lately.  Its that time of year when I don't feel like doing much except the necessary chores and then after that mostly watch TV. Recently, I decided to start keeping a handwritten journal to try and prod myself into a better state of mind.  Actually, I think it helps, though I still have the TV on.

Now I'll find out if I can remember how to change the color of the blog's background.  Yup, mission accomplished.

   

Photo taken earlier this evening...

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Here's a hummingbird moth.  I've always wanted to get a photo of one but its difficult to do because they dart around so quickly.

This morning's sky seemed photoworthy...

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An early September sky...

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Here's some photos of a Swallowtail butterfly.  

The photo above was cropped and edited from this next photo.

     I tried and tried to get a shot with the wings extended.  This next one was the best I could do.  Photos can be quite deceiving...butterflies do not hold still for more than a second or two giving very little time to focus and frame the scene so don't think I planned for the wing tip and tail tips to be cut off.

Here's a couple of recent butterfly photos.

 I think its a Painted Lady.

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Here's an evening sky from a few weeks ago...

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