We had a gorgeous week weather-wise and that let me get some gardening done and some outdoor photos. The rain is back today but that was OK because I got my daily Keeley. But my favorite shot this week has to be the bunny. I just love the incredible detail on the fur on the rabbit.
Thanks for still coming around to see my pics. For those of you who are travel photo buffs, we are only slightly more than two months before we leave for Africa, so stick with us.
That’s about it for this week. Don’t forget: if you click on the first shot, you can scroll through using your arrow keys or by swiping. Also, while you are looking at the individual photos, click the small i at the bottom of the page to read the full caption and see my photographic metadata.
This is the second shot of the year I have taken with my iPhone. Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading about the capabilities of the iPhone and how it is almost as good as my camera. I don’t believe it, but today I thought I would try out the RAW feature on the phone. RAW is the format I use with my Nikon. You probably shoot JPEGs, while I shoot RAW. It is a huge file that gives me the equivalent of a digital negative. That means I can adjust things like exposure, white balance, and a lot more. I’m not impressed with Apple’s version of RAW. When I go to edit it, I get a JPEG, which is not what I was after. I am going to have to do a little more learning before I am willing to use my phone instead of my Nikon. In the meantime, we had a gorgeous day here on Redmond Ridge, and I took a hike and passed one of our many ponds.
I bought some coleus at Costco yesterday and liked the color. Here’s a pic; hope you like it too! Our days have been so beautiful, but I haven’t taken my Nikon out in three days. There’s too much gardening to do and too many walks to enjoy.
Went out to take a photo of our front yard tonight. There were too many shadows and the light was very harsh. However, this glass bird outside our door had a great shadow, so here it is. Our yards are improving every day. Mother Nature has given us five days of sun in a row, which means I am working hard to get our landscaping looking perfect. If you had told me three years ago that I would be enjoying gardening, I would have said you were nuts. But I kind of am.
We are enjoying an amazing stretch of weather here in the Puget Sound. If I am not mistaken, the last rain we had was four days ago, and no more is expected until Saturday. All this incredible sunshine has led to a full-blown blossoming of most of Trilogy’s trees. These two are right on the way into the main section of the development and were so beautiful that I had to get out of my car and walk around for a while in the middle of the traffic circle (also called a roundabout or rotary, depending on where you are from) to take this shot. We have a gorgeous flowering dogwood in our front yard, but it is a very late bloomer this year. It has buds, but my guess is the flowers are about two weeks away. Needless to say, you will get a photo one day around that time.
This one is a trail heading into the Redmond Watershed Preserve. We have this amazing preserve just to the west of us, with more than 7 miles of trails like this one. On days like this, it is an incredibly beautiful place.
Another beautiful day in paradise! I had some free time this afternoon and walked a trail that’s about a block from our house. I took around 100 photos during my walk, and these are my two favorites. First is the rabbit that crossed my path and just sat there. My camera does such a great job with detail! I chose this as my favorite because I can almost see every hair on that hare ?.
I call this photo, “My Week,” because with all the great weather we’ve had this week, I spent most of it working in this yard- well, this yard and our backyard. We had a professional landscaper do our yard last year. They removed our lawn and several hedges, as well as a very large but very ugly tree. Then we replaced it with plants that require much less water, installed drip irrigation, and added the faux stream bed. We were very pleased with it.
Time for the weekly Keeley. Today, I stood in the living room while Keeley sat on the end of one of our recliners, in what we call her vulture stance. I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures of her, making silly noises and faces. She gave me my favorite look, turning her head from side to side as if to say, “What the hell are you doing?”
Photography acts as a teaser, suggesting we can know something that we can never know. And the more we can’t obtain it, the more we want it. —Alison Jackson
