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.

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.

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.

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

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...