More Dragonflies

Yes a few more dragonfly pics, these taken right out by the lake where I live. I am fascinated by them. This particular kind comes in bright pink, green and blue. The funny thing is they have all the room in the world to fly about yet they keep landing on this one tiny stick that is poking out of the water. I found if I just planted myself there I would have many different opportunities to catch different ones landing on it. The first pic isn't too exciting but you can see what a cool color of blue it is.

Then we have this green one perched upon the oh so popular stick. I really think dragonflies must be the creatures that inspired the creation of fairies in the storybooks. They even have funky looking little faces.

Here we have the photo of a pink one, had a hard time getting one of them to sit still, which I have turned into a painting-I love this one! I wonder how long I would have to sit out there to get one of each color sitting together on the stick, ummm probably not going to happen.

And finally a more artistic shot of a blue one on that stick. Captured all of these with my 70-300mm lens all the way out to 300mm, someday I will have a longer lens but these are still pretty good. Also took them all hand held so pretty pleased with the sharpness though perhaps I will take the tripod out tomorrow aim the camera at that stick and see how much sharper I can get them!
Steph

More Marvin

Today I got some great shots of my favorite duck, the one I call Marvin. He is the mascot of my community. I am told he has lived here for 5 years and is a one of a kind. Usually he is surrounded by a bunch of mallard ducks who also live here. Recently there was about a week though where all of the other ducks vanished and it was just him :(. I have been here almost a year and there have always been about 20 ducks living at the lake here so this was very odd. He was forced to hang around the egrets that stop by from time to time. Then I noticed 2 other ducks appeared and today there were once again a bunch of them out there. I guess they must have gone on vacation. I am not sure if Marvin can fly very well. Today all of the other ducks took flight to fly across the lake and he just swam really fast. Hope you enjoy these photos of my awsome duck friend Marvin!

Old photos

Hi
Wow I went a lot longer than I meant to without a post again. I will be sure to get on a better schedule again. Actually may post a few things back to back. I am working on various things including getting ready to shoot my first wedding! Also I have been working on scanning some old photos. These are all old photos of my grandmother. The first one is my favorite, I put some painting/sketch effects on these to help eliminate some of the noise or fuzziness that comes along with these sorts of photos.

I am only now realising that these first two were obviously taken on the same day. I have a pile of photos and happened to pick both of them, they just seem so classic!

Isn't this last one a beautiful portrait? The photo was very dark and I was able to improve it quite a bit. Love the polka dot blouse. I wish people still dressed classy like this!
Steph