First Place!

I did quite a bit of traveling in October, thus the lack of blog posts but expect several good ones to appear over the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I wanted to share this fantastic little news. I'm still reasonably new to photography. I bought my Nikon digital SLR in August 2011 and have been playing around with it ever since. I recently joined the neighborhood photography club and took some Nikon seminars to improve but I am by no means a professional photographer. This is a very amateur hobby of mine. I get frustrated with all the buttons, dials, settings, edits etc and not touch my camera for months. One great thing about my current neighborhood is that there is great scenery and all sorts of activities to photograph. And the photography club encourages taking your camera out to these events through monthly homework assignments. So it's been good to have a reason to play with my camera.

The neighborhood held a Veteran's Day event just a couple of days ago. This is an annual event run by resident volunteers. I've been lucky enough to be asked to photograph this event (as well as the Memorial Day events) for a couple of years now. It is great practice. This year they decided to hold a Patriotic photography contest to encourage more participation. I submitted a photo I took at the 2013 Memorial Day event. And I ended up winning 1st place. Luckily the organizer thought of me and reminded me to submit something the day before the event - it wasn't even on my radar because I was so focused on actually preparing to photograph the actual event. It was a nice surprise and really encourages me to continue working on this hobby of mine. With a little more practice, I can become even better. Makes me feel like I'm on the right track.

The original photo taken Memorial Day 2013

All the contests

First place!

The third place winner is actually the lead instructor for the neighborhood photography club

Blue Bonnets!

It is wild flower season in Texas. This is my favorite time of year because the weather is just perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. The bugs haven't fully come out. And the wild flowers along the sides of the road make for a pretty commute. I'm lucky that my neighborhood decided to plant wildflowers along the walk ways and lakes so I didn't have to make the drive into hill country to take some snaps of these pretty flowers. Blue bonnets are the Texas state flower and very popular to photograph. You'll find people stopped on the side of the roads trying to capture these flowers.  I woke up early one Sunday morning to catch these lovely blooms in the morning light.(Especially before they got trampled on by people doing family portraits. I seriously don't understand smashing flowers to sit your child in the middle of the flower patch. Put the child on the side, the front, or behind. Let the flowers be so others can enjoy them. End Rant!) If you plan to photograph wildflowers, just be careful of your surroundings. Snakes apparently like to hide in the undergrowth. And tons of fire ants. Wear proper shoes and long pants. I was lucky that I was able to lay on a cement sidewalk and take some close ups without rolling the grass. I still came away with 2 bug bites though. All these photos were taken with my Nikon D5100 with a 50mm lens.