They are under the bushes in our front garden beside the driveway!!! I totally missed them until my husband pointed out to me. I was really thrilled. I had been dreaming about taking photos of this type of mushrooms for a long time – Finally, finally the opportunity came… I snapped many pictures and this is one of them:
This is not a fitting picture for today’s theme but i post it anyway.
Chris went to Catholic Men’s Conference today and I got a chance to drive Tim and Alan to their soccer match this morning. It was a fun drive and boys seemed to be in a very cheery mode. First we listened to some Tim’s music, then mine and then Alan’s piano jazz.
We arrived 15 minutes early so we sit in the car talking and enjoying the music. When the warm-up started, I took a walk and went to the coffee shop to get this beautiful coffee mocha:
Ephesians 4: 30 – 32
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice,
and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
This picture was taken in the afternoon on May 26 after Andrew’s first ever soccer. He just finished his soccer and came home for some more lunch. Apparently he loved the chicken fingers I baked for him.
While eating, Andrew was also having some bike conversation with Chris, who was doing his usual maintenance on his road bike at the time.
Psalms 139: 1 – 3
Thou hast searched me and known me!
Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up;
Thou discernest my thoughts from afar.
Thou searchest out my path and my lying down,
and art acquainted with all my ways.
Love means you will do something about it. Photo Credit: Chris
The story is written, and it is coming. I just need to do some editing. This is a teaser 
What I’ve long taught at workshops is this: the wider the lens you use, the closer you probably should be to the nearest thing in your scene. And there should be a nearest thing in your scene!
–Thom Hogan, Lens Week
I’m still working on my “back to basics” and thinking about the art of photography. The above quote has been sticking in my head lately, along with some other points in the article – namely that “zooming” closer to an image flattens your feeling of depth, whereas zooming out then walking into the image enhances it. If you want depth in an image, go wide angle and get close.
The above image is my first real attempt at doing this – rather than shooting at 70 mm from a comfortable distance like I normally would have, I put the lens at 18mm, then moved into my minimum focus distance. The result really is interesting – rather than a flower in front of a pylon, I ended up with a field of flowers leading to a pylon.
I think I’m going to have to experiment with this more – rather than thinking of wide angle / telephoto as magnification, think of it as flattening or deepening an image.
P.S. I’m still using manual focus for everything, and I swear my images are sharper because of it.
The camera capabilities of the iPhone have a lot of attention, especially considering it is a lower resolution camera compared to is competition, and yet it seems to outperform those better cameras.
This photo, which I took while out for a lunchtime walk, is a perfect example of why. White swans against a dark river is a classic nightmare exposure, and look at how the iPhone handled it. If you look you will notice the body of the right swan is blown out, but the rocks are as dark as they can without losing all the detail – this seems about the perfect exposure for this dynamic range.
Too many cameras would have lost the swans entirely.
