Roses

I bought this rosebush about three years ago. It started out small, of course, and every year it gets a little bigger and fluffier. This year the flowers were amazing. They clustered in about 4 flowers at the end of each branch, and they were SO BEAUTIFUL! The thing I love about these roses is that they change colors! They start out orange, then turn red, then darker red, and then they fade to white before the petals finally fall off. Also, it'll bloom about 3 or 4 times throughout the summer. I have a pink rosebush that's mixed in with our hedges (I have no idea how it got there), and it's really beautiful too, but it only blooms once a year. I LOVE rose bushes. I love the smell, the look, everything. I would like a few more. But for now, I am really enjoying these roses.

in full bloom

Have I mentioned I LOVE spring? I really enjoy summer and fall, but there is something so rejuvenating about winter finally coming to an end and the earth coming back to life.

love this lone tulip in a field of "weeds"

love smelling the flowers all over town

a bouquet of tulips from my bulb garden

Baby F, and Family M

Remember Ashley? She's the woman who gave me the honor of doing my first maternity portraits. That was a few weeks ago. Last week I had the honor of doing their baby/family portraits. I'm really happy with how they turned out. I was a little nervous because they were outside in the sun and wind, and Little Guy wasn't too happy about it. But with a little help from my new friend Picnik, we managed to turn out some pretty great photos. I hope the McGhans are happy too!

I'm kind of in love with this one.

... and this one's cool too. Photoshop.

Eggs!

Playing with Picnik.
While I like editing and making cool artistic looking photos, I love the purity and simplicity of the original image. I feel like all the editing takes away from the beauty of the natural capture. So here I'm showing both.
I like the edits better on the 2nd one. It's not too different, just softened the color a little bit, and added the "matte" around the edges.

playing with photoshop

I'm still learning how to use Photoshop. I found some neat features while poking around tonight. The first two are pics I've taken recently, flowers from my yard. The last one was taken a few years ago, but was also from my yard. It's one of my all time favorites.

I know I haven't been posting too much over here. I've been focusing my creative energy on my Picture-A-Day series on my "family" blog. Just wanted to share this lily. We had just about given up on it because it sat in its pot for about 2 or 3 years and did nothing but sprout this tiny little bud on top of the bulb. Then all of a sudden, this year, it just shot up. Every day it would grow at least an inch, and now it looks like this! there are about 3 huge flowers at the top of a 2-foot-tall stem! It's absolutely gorgeous, and I'm glad we didn't give up on it after all.