Yet another picture of the botanical gardens. I was photographing roses, when I noticed how the sun was shining right in front of the rose bed, illuminating these flowers very nicely.

These purple flowers are really just starting to flourish, despite the fact that it's October. I took a few good photos of them in the evening when the sun came out for a few seconds between cloudbursts.

I'm off for the Thanksgiving long weekend and would like to spend as much time as possible outside taking photos. Unfortunately, rain is forecast for the entire long weekend.

When I took this photo (in my yard last weekend) I remember thinking it was somehow visually dissonant, and that the flower looked very defiant. In spite of all that, I still liked the picture. I haven't looked at it again since making it ready for posting. It will be interesting to see if my impression has changed.

I was off from work today, but stuck at home waiting for some furniture to be delivered. I spent the morning staring wistfully out the window thinking that the light was perfect for taking photos. Sure enough, as soon as the furniture arrived the skies opened and down came the rain. I've always liked rain, but to be honest, I have liked it a lot less since I've become interested in photography. Here's another picture from Saturday at the botanical garden... which is the last sunny day I can remember.

I have the Thanksgiving long weekend off. I'm hoping the sun decides to make a rare appearance and that I can go somewhere interesting but not too crowded with my camera.

I took quite a few photos of these stunning red leaves. I liked the way the soft leaves were caressing each other. This isn't the best one for composition, but it had better color and sharper focus than the picture I liked most (which was a view of the two left-hand leaves head on).

This is a recent personal favorite of mine. Fall might be here, but those destructive little beetles continue to eat anything and everything in my yard.

The random number generator again helped me decide what to post today. I couldn't take any new shots thanks to yet another downpour.

This pink flower was photographed at the botanical garden yesterday. The only thing really special about it is its pinkness. When I first saw this group of flowers in real life, my first thought was, "These are impossibly pink". I was planning to save this shot for Red Bubble, but who am I to argue with the random number generator?

I've noticed that my camera does weird things with bright colors. Bright reds, oranges and pinks tend to look kind of burnt out sometimes, especially if its sunny. I was kind of annoyed about it yesterday after taking >20 photos of fluorescent orange flowers that didn't turn out. An expensive camera like mine shouldn't do that! In this case, it was likely at least partially my fault. I'm expecting to get a light setup soon for still-life and portrait photography. I figure this will keep me from sinking too deeply into depression over the winter when it's too cold/dark to go outside. In preparation for learning to deal with multiple light sources, I'm learning to use my camera in full manual mode. All of the photos I took at the garden yesterday were done with no automatic settings whatsoever.

Photography has a steep learning curve... but unlike some of the other steep learning curves I have encountered in life, I'm thoroughly enjoying this one so far.

I have lots of time free for photography now that my exams are over (if still not as much time as I would like). Once getting over the initial hurdles of using new photo management software, things are running far more efficiently on my antique laptop. These factors combined have allowed me to get ahead of the game for once. I actually have lots of photos ready and waiting to be posted here and on Red Bubble. Today I used a random number generator to help me decide which photos to post.

Today I went to the same botanical garden that Graem and I visited our first week in Ottawa. This time I was properly armed with the macro lens and my Lensbaby. As I walked home, I experimented taking Lensbaby pictures of the fall trees. As always with the Lensbaby, most didn't turn out. It is tough to know exactly where the area of sharp focus is, especially when shooting something far away. Sometimes things look good in the viewfinder and the camera's LCD, only to be a blurry mess when I view them on the big screen at home. When a Lensbaby shot works, though, the results can be magic.

The light is not terrific in this photo, but I'm happy with the way it turned out. I actually took several shots trying to get the framing right. I was crouching at the side of the road, trying to time my shots between the passing cars. I must have looked like a lunatic!

When I went to work this morning, the sun was just coming up and there was a beautiful mist enveloping the fall trees. It seemed warmer outside than in my house, but I noticed that I could see my breath for the first time this fall. If would have been a good time for photography.

I took this purple flower picture a couple of days ago. The flowers are kind of like me - stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the end of summer.

This may look like a picture of wires from a broken fence, but they are actually little vines. The color version looks rather nondescript. I photographed these vines when we stopped at a lake en route to Val-des-Bois. We were taking photos of a little frog when I actually got a bored and stopped for a bit to amuse myself with the vines.

We assumed the frog would be skittish and took several pictures from far away. Slowly, we crept closer and closer. We thought that we might get an action shot by stirring the water near the frog with a stick. To our immense surprise, the frog lunged toward the stick and tried to bite it. The whole time we thought we had been creeping up on the frog, the frog had also been 'hunting' us - patiently waiting for us to get close enough for him to take a chomp. We spent some more time (unsuccessfully) trying to get a photo of the frog with his mouth open lunging at the stick.

Graem got the best frog photos of the day. The one time I crept onto the rocks, I fell backwards onto my butt. I don't mind getting wet shoes or wet pants for the sake of a good photo, but I wouldn't want to fall forward and smash/submerge thousands of dollars worth of camera and lens. Therefore, Graem got all of the closeup shots... some of them pretty good.

I haven't posted any frog photos... mine aren't any good, and I don't like to post photos other people have taken. I might someday make an exception for this frog. He was, after all, pretty cute.