photography: May 2009 Archives

On the way to a weekend Mother's Day dinner visit in Buffalo and some cruising in Ontario, this front lawn near Batavia, NY, caught my eye. This sea of blue belongs to a gentleman named Dennis, who doesn't cut his lawn in the spring until the forget-me-nots die off. Thanks for that.

Sprinkled in with the blues were dots of yellow dandelions. Now, Dennis is trying to rid his yard of the golden pests, but they provided a nice contrast to the blue waves (it was very, very windy).

Remember, contrast isn't just black and white, big or small, but shades of colors, times of day, fancy and plain, beautiful and ugly, etc.

With wildlife, sometimes a photographer doesn't have a lot of choice in the background. Like this cardinal, it landed on the branch and I was stuck where I was, as well as stuck with the background.

I was looking to merge the pink dogwood and the brilliance of the cardinal, but because of his landing spot, all I got was a dogwood branch growing out of his head. A longer depth of field would have made it worse, and the lens was already wide open, giving me as little depth of field as possible.

Any suggestions on how to make this work? OK, aside from sitting for a day and a half waiting for him to land two inches to the left or right...