Sunday Stills Challenge – silhouettes

I think this week’s Sunday Stills challenge was one of my favorites so far.  All we had to do was have a sunny day and something to get a silhouette of!  I got quite a few, plus a couple from the archives.

Took this in the in one of the fields left for hay.   Had a gorgeous sunset that night, too.  With this picture I was trying to duplicate a picture I took last July in the same field. 
This is the one I took last July.  It actually happened by accident.  I didn’t know as much about the camera and had it on the wrong setting and got this amazing silhouette of the grass instead of the sunset.

Blue Jay on the house roof.  I can’t believe he actually stayed there long enough for me to go get the camera.  They’re so flighty that you usually only run to get the camera, come back, only to discover that he’s gone.

This one’s from the archives.  Took this back at the end of April.  He just had to come over and investigate!

In the hayfield again.  Trace is just waiting patiently for me to stop clicking away so he can go back to the house.

Out for an evening ride….

And now my absolute favorite out of all my silhouette shots.  The colors just come together so well.

Sunday Stills Challenge – Yellow

Japanese rose

Monkey flower

Mute Monday

Sunday Stills Challenge – Eyes

This week’s assignment as been fun and a bit, well, challenging! It’s all in getting your subject to hold still for more than ten seconds…

Nick ♥

Sylvester the cat.

One of our resident Siamese cats.

A calf we named Ty, after Ty Murray - the bullrider

Melvin's right eye.

Sunday Stills Challenge – Black ‘n White

This week’s challange is a little bit different than the previous ones we’ve been having.  For this week, we were supposed to pick two subjects from past challanges and reshoot them, either in black and white, or edit them and change the color to black and white after they’ve been taken.

Trace posing so beautifully for the camera (I think he loves his job as a model….)  This is from the pets challenge, which I believe was the very first Sunday Stills Challenge ever issued!  Shot in black and white.

Shot in black and white.  Do you consider your non-working horse a pet?  I do, so I figured Nick would fit into the pet category.

Shot in black and white.  Finally, our Siamese kitten/yearling, Gretchen.

Shot in black and white.  Black cherry from last week’s macros of flowers challenge.

Pale pink/white Rhododendron.  And finally, my favorite flower shot of the week!  Shot in black and white.

Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Stills Challenge – Flower Macros

This week’s challenge was to shoot some macros of whatever is starting to bloom for the folks who don’t have much green and no flowers yet.  This is the perfect challenge for this week, almost everything has greened up and is flowering like crazy.  I took so many pictures that I had a hard time narrowing it down to a select twelve or thirteen to post!

Big Leaf or Oregon Maple

Johnny Jump-up

Oregon Grape

white Trillium

Trillium, complete with spider

ornamental quince

Slender Toothwort

Bleeding Heart

Match-stick lichen, also known as British Soldiers

purple and periwinkle Vinca minor

wild flowering currant

Mute Monday

Sunday Stills Challenge – Barns

This week’s challenge was to get inside a barn and experiment with angles on the different stuff inside.  I can only speak for myself, but but this was an easy and fun challenge, since we have several barns.

This is the "Horse Barn," just out from the house. This is just to give you an idea to what it looks like on the outside.

These are the horse tie stalls that we used when we still had draft horses. Even though this is call the Horse Barn, only part of it is actually used for horses. One side of the barn had the tie stalls, the middle is used for hay, and on the other side, is a small feeding shed.

One of the two or three swallow nests in the barn...

Sunday Stills Challenge – the color red

A stack of cinnabar-colored fiesta platters. These are actually my favorite color....

Late Sunday Still

I would have had my post up earlier, but I forgot to schedule my post and then by the time I remembered, we were busy putting plastic on the brooder that had it’s original plastic slashed to save it from collapsing under the weight of the snow.

This week’s challenge is animals of husbandry.  For a little extra challenge, Ed told us to try and get three animals in the same shot. 

Taking a relaxing afternoon nap in the warm sun.....

Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Stills Challenge – Lines

Sunday Stills – water

I almost didn’t have any pictures for this week’s challenge, but thanks to a “spring” thawing that melted most of the remaining snow off the ground and roof of the shop, creating little river of water, I now have pictures!

Wordless Wednesday – hot off the press

Sunday Stills Challenge – motion

Ed’s challenge for this week was motion, or something indicating motion.  I kind of got a late start this week, since I forgot to check the Sunday Stills blog until Thursday! I think I got some good ones, though.

"Can I go for a walk?"

"This is fun!"

"Look how fast I'm running."

"Catch me if you can!"

"Did you whistle for us?"

"Lets race!"

"Here we come!!!"

Sunday Stills Challenge

Couldn’t resist doing a reflection…

Decorative ends on the house.

late Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Stills Challenge – the moon

This week’s challenge - a bit more challenging, but still exciting – was shooting for the moon. Literally. Anyway, the clouds that have been hanging around, threatening snow didn’t exactly cooperate, so most of these are from the archives.

 
The clouds parted briefly, and this is what I got…

This one and all the ones that follow are from the archive.  If I remember right, I had the camera set to landscape, inside SCN.

Lucky shot. . . On auto, I think.

Landscape, SCN. I discovered that the best time to get a great moon shot is early morning, as the sun is coming up, or when late afternoon, before the sun sets.

On another note, I’m curious to see what kind of camera you all use…

Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Stills Challenge – Reflections

This week’s challenge was to find some reflections…. harder than it looks, but if you have enough mud puddles that haven’t dried up yet and reflective surfaces, you’re bound to come up with something!

This is one of our last remaining mud puddles, they’ve been drying up in all this nice weather we’ve been having.  Still managed to get a picture of the trees across the road and the power lines.

This kerosene lamp sits in our bay window in the living room and everyday when it starts to get light out, the lamp starts to reflect the hedge trees along the road.  It really is beautiful to see.

Sunday Stills Challenge – High and Low

This weeks challenge was to shoot something from up high and/or down low.  My shots:

Up high. Took this in SCN, museum.  The museum setting uses no flash and the camera is silent, good for distances in between close up and landscape.

Same setting, I only used a timer for this picture, as the light was kind of low. 2 seconds, if I remember right.

Down low! Museum again, zoomed all the way out

Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Stills Challenge

Ed over over at Sunday Stills was out of ideas for this week’s challenge, so he left it up to us to decide what to shoot.  I decided to try wild life…

  
“Lurking In the Dark”  This one just kind of happened by accident, the deer were too far off  for the flash to illuminate them…

Our resident tame squirrel.

Lucky shot! shutter speed is an amazing thing…

I guess he decided that I had gotten close enough; time to fly to a different tree.
New tree, but still within the range of my lens.

◊◊◊ Note:  These are all straight out of the camera, in case you were wondering.  All I did was crop them to make the pictures/files were smaller.

Wordless Wednesday

Late Sunday Still

I would have had my post on yesterday if the dang power hadn’t went out in the middle of the night. Just got it back a few minutes ago…

What could be better color than a blue Aussie?

Wordless Wednesday

Mute Monday

Sunday Stills Challenge

I had so many favorite close-ups, it was hard to choose, but I finally settled on the barb wire pics I took the other day.  The one above sort of looks like it has hair on it, the frost is so long.

This one was in a more protected area, so not as much frost.

Wordless Wednesday

Tranquil Tuesday

This is one of the two Red-tail hawks that have been  hanging around lately.  While the cows were still out in the field, he/she would be waiting in the old dead cherry tree in the Fourteen acre field, just watching us and keeping a watchful eye on things.

Sunday Stills Challenge

This picture is my top ten favorites that I’ve ever took.    I took this in mid June before we cut hay up in field above the horse barn.

Another favorite from that evening.  I love the way the all the colors came together in this one…

Sunday Stills Challenge

Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Stills Challenge

Melvin is hoping for a bite or two of the mock Plum Pudding….

Photo Meme…

This looked like a fun meme and I don’t have much for you today so I am going to give it a shot… Thanks to Threecollie.

The Rules:
1. Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.
2. Go to the 6th Folder and then pick the 6th Picture.
3. Post it on your blog and tell the story that goes with the picture.
4. Tag 5 friends to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog telling them about it.

I didn’t take this photo since I was not alive in 1912, but the sixth folder just happened to be my collection of ships built by the White Star line, making the sixth picture the Titanic.  I do know that this picture was taken in Belfast, Ireland.

I’m not going to tag anyone, but whoever wants to to this, I’d love to see it!

Wordless Wednesday

Snow?

Our first snow of the year! There’s about a half an inch on the ground now, and it’s still falling.  Starting tomorrow, the temperature is going to drop into the twenties of the high and lower to mid teens for the lows.  Brr!

Looks cold!

Wordless Wednesday

Tranquil Tuesday