Day 276; Time Flies

It's been a very long time since my last post and I am incredibly sorry. A lot of things have been going on and I simply have not gotten around to it. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, because I know I sure did. This weekend it's been relatively warm, which has been great. It's made me wish summer were back though, so I dug out this old photo from the summer of 2012. My little brother Noah is holding a baby rabbit and was pretty happy about it. I didn't do too much editing to this back then, except for a scratch on his right eyebrow which I had decided to airbrush out. Now, it looks clumsy and kind of obvious, but back then I didn't know any better. I do love the natural lighting going on here.

Day 267; Californian at Convention

This was a great weekend spent at the Iowa State Rabbit Breeders Assoc. State Convention. I didn't have many chances to take photos for my blog, but I did get some photos of my sister's Californian rabbit. This rabbit won Best In Show for youth three times over the course of the weekend and will be going to Texas for the national convention. This cool little photo backdrop was set up by some friends of ours, and was used a lot over the weekend. I liked the fall colors of the setup and complimented those with a dusk effect. While this isn't the type of photo I usually post, it is nice to take photos which are important for the subjects and not as much the artistic merit.

Day 262; Cat's Eyes

The good news is we have cats again! We got two kittens last Sunday and the whole family is enjoying having some house pets for a change. The bad news is the cats don't like being photographed. At all. They refuse to sit still and hide when they see the camera coming. I finally got this shot which came out of the camera blurry, boring, and downright bad. With some editing I wanted to make a very unconventional, artsy shot. I cropped to a more interesting angle, applied black and white effects, then did an HDR effect which made the photo look somewhat like a sketch. I'm going to keep working on it, and hopefully I'll get some really good cat photos taken in the future.

Day 251; Fences and Foals

I just got back this afternoon from the 4-H vet science camp. It was so much fun, even though it rained practically every day. Thankfully it was nice when we toured the dairy farm, vet med school, and horse barns at Iowa State University. These foals were one of my favorite parts of the tour. They would come right up to the fence for the kids to pet.

"A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence." ~Pam Brown

Day 250; Chicken On a Hill

I'm back from State Conference! It was SO much fun. I've had a nice relaxing day home today, before I leave for a 4-H camp tomorrow where I will be a counselor-in-training. While I'm still here I'm posting a photo of one of my brother Josiah's hens. I don't really like chickens in person, but I've always liked the way they look in pictures. For this particular photo I layered "cinerama" and "dusk" filters to get the look I wanted.

Day 243; The Not-So-Ugly Duckling

Ugly is one of the last adjectives I would use to describe our new ducklings which just hatched out this morning. We brought this one inside right after it hatched for a photo shoot in Noah's hands, and it has since gotten fluffier and even more adorable.  The duckling is black, so in order to fully appreciate the details of its feathers I opted for a black and white effect.

Day 238; Zebras

Zebras are one of my favorite animals. I love the great contrast between their black and white stripes, and highlighted it with a Holga effect just as I did last year after our trip to the zoo. To make sure the focus was on the zebra on the left I added a focal soften.

Day 237; The Elephants' Wrinkles

On our trip to the zoo I got several cool shots, so I'll be posting a few more. Today the subject is an elephant. Elephants are interesting photography subjects both because of their enormous size and multitude of wrinkles. The elephants' color was affected by the dust they were covered in, and I complemented this color with a Dusk effect from picmonkey.com.

Day 236; The Butterfly House

When we were at the zoo yesterday we visited the butterfly house, something we didn't get to see last year. They were all lovely, but most wouldn't hold still. This little guy was the least active and thus the most photogenic. I was hoping he would spread his wings so more of the brilliant blue color would be visible, but unfortunately that didn't happen. I still liked the textures in both the tree and the wings, as well as the bright colors.

Day 230; Pig on the Move

This time of year means feeder pigs are on the farm once again, and they are just as cute and sweet as ever. This one started trotting up to me as soon as I went out to their pen. To edit, I used a faded Dusk effect, which I felt played off the brown and pink hues already present in the image.

Day 229; Sherman (Again)

It's been a while since you guys saw any pictures of our puppies. Actually, since the last photo (here) we've sold Sherman's brother and sister. But Sherman has stuck around. Today while I was out trying to take photos of flowers, Sherman kept vying for attention. He especially likes belly rubs, which is what I was doing when I snapped this shot. The sky has been really overcast all the time lately, so the original out of camera shot was rather dull. To fix this while editing, I increased the saturation in the grass and lightened the exposure so details in Sherman's dark coat could be seen.

Day 219; Owl Face

It's been kind of nice taking a break from my blog recently. But I'm ready to get back to it. This necklace featuring an owl was a gift from an old family friend. For today's shoot I put a netted veil over a plaid shirt to give texture to the background. The owl's golden color didn't turn out very pretty in the end product, so I went with a black and white.

Day 206; Muddy Tonks

This afternoon was the first time in a long time when temperatures were well above freezing. As such, all the snow we've been accumulating melted leaving lots and lots of mud and slush. Tonks, the mother of our adorable litter of puppies, managed to find some of this mud and apparently thought it would be a good idea to play in it.  Here she is resting on a bed of old feed sacks in one of the barns. When I took this photo the sun was beginning to set with some windows letting in the bright yellow light and causing the patches behind her.

Day 202; Sherman the Puppy

I'm so sorry I haven't posted for so long - life distracted me. Since my last post I've turned 16 in addition to my regular obligations for school and 4-H. Not to mention we've still been sick. In any event, I haven't been posting and now I'm going to change that. Today's photo is of Sherman, one of the three puppies we're the proud owners of. This photo was actually taken a few days ago, and the puppies have all grown a lot since then. I used the Holga effect from picmonkey.com to give a more artistic look to this snapshot, mostly because I didn't care for the red color of the coat in the background. I didn't realize until I took this picture with a flash how shiny the puppies' coats are.

Day 198

Happy Valentine's Day! I don't have a Valentine this year, but my mom planned a pretty awesome day by buying tickets to a concert. Unfortunately, we weren't able to go because of road conditions, but we still had a great time shopping. So instead of spending today with a boyfriend I spent it with my mom and (dramatic pause) our new puppies! That's right, we are now the proud owners of 3 adorable puppies. All three puppies are black with white spots on their tummies, so when they're nursing as shown in the photo you can't really see them. Their mother, Tonks, is a stray who showed up at our house a couple months ago. It soon became obvious that she was pregnant, and late Tuesday night she finally had her puppies. Most didn't make it because of the extreme cold we were facing, but these three did and I don't know how my parents are going to ever be able to convince us to sell or give them away. I used a slight Dusk effect to bring out some of the warmer hues of Tonks' coat.

Day 190

A few years ago I was given this rabbit shaped ring as a Christmas present. I love it, but I haven't worn it all that often. I was sifting through my jewelry box looking for subjects to shot and thought it would make an interesting image. I laid out the skirt of a dress for the background because I liked the shimmer of the fabric. I added a slight frost to the edges to enhance the highlights.

Day 167

My dog Lupin is not always the best subject for photos because he is constantly moving. The vision behind this photo was a nice, traditional portrait with him looking at me. That didn't work out so well because he was distracted by something to his right, but I think it still was a pretty good image with colors and texture. When I was editing I thought this photo needed something to make it really stand out. I used a black and white focal effect, so that Lupin and the surrounding area would be in the original color with the snow on the edges of the photo turning grayscale. I also added a thin black frame, as I thought it really gave the photo a finished look and complemented the dramatic lighting going on.

Day 164

This probably isn't the most impressive macro of an insect you've ever seen, but it's my first one so I'm going to post it. We were out taking care of the rabbits a couple days ago and a few house flies were landing on the leaves of this tree, I got out my camera and took a few handheld macro shots. I liked the texture and color of the leaf, and the angle this fly was sitting at. A slight dark edge to bring out more detail and the colors of the fly was my only adjustment.

Day 162

This Saturday my mom took me to a rabbit show, and we had a great time. Before we left I had convinced her to let me get this little Holland Lop buck, who the whole family fell in love with as soon as they saw him. He ended up being an early birthday present for my little brother Nehemiah, who gave him the appropriate name "Loppy." This photo was taken in out rabbit barn while Noah, my youngest brother, held him. I processed it with a dusk effect to add an artsy feel to an otherwise simple photo.

Day 159

My brothers found a salamander the other day, and I snapped a few shots before we had to go. If I had had more time I would have loved to hold it and take some more photos from different angles. To make the salamander really stand out, I painted black and white onto the rest of the photo while leaving him the original color.