Beautiful Day

 

I’m splitting my time on this perfect Sunday between stripping paint on kitchen cabinets and working on my new website.

Summer days like these are why I put up with winter.  The sun is shining, blue sky, tiny trace of a breeze occasionally and about 75 degrees (23 Celsius for my more metrically enlightened friends!).  By the way, click here for a pretty good site for conversion: Edheads

Anyway, as I was going through photos for the website, I ran across this one that I took at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.  Nice reminder for me to take advantage of days like today.  Hope it gives you a smile!

By the way, for those of you on Facebook – I’m trying to get my “fan” numbers up.  Please swing by and become a fan.

PJ Anderson Photography on FB

Have a great remainder of your weekend!   PJ

Hen and Chicks

 

After I built the waterfall for our backyard pond, I planted a few succulents amongst the rocks.  All of them have really thrived out there the last year or so.  In the last few weeks, one of the Hen and Chicks shot up a stalk about 12 inches tall with terrific little flowers

Apparently, this happens when the plant reaches maturity after three or four years.  You can read about it here at Wikipedia.

I’ve been meaning to go out and photograph the flowers for several days.  Fortunately, it has stayed blooming until I finally made the trip.  Crawling on the rocks in a very uncomfortable position, I was able to get a nice macro photo of one of the flowers.  Thanks again to my friends on the network for motivating me to get out with the macro lens again!

ISO 800, f/4.5, 1/50 sec, macro – Nikon D300

Below is a photo of the full plant

Hoping to have my new business web site up and running in the next few days.  I’ll post a link here when it is ready.

Patrick

Trying times

 

First off, apologies for not keeping up with the blog and posting photos. 

The economic situation continues to hit closer to home for me.  Been several months of worry and frustration.  Today, my primary job put me on an  “hourly” status.  I continue the mantra “at least I have a job” but it gets hard to even stay positive.

I’m in the process of waiting for an email that describes the change in my employment status.  Hard to do any productive work while I am waiting.  I took a cup of coffee out to the deck look at the weather as we have thunderstorms in the area.  I was out looking at the sky before I noticed  at my feet that there was a Mourning Dove sitting.

I’m not sure if he flew into the sliding glass door or what the situation was – but he didn’t fly away.  I figured I might as well grab the camera and see what kind of close up work I could get.

ISO 200, F/3.2, 1/1250 sec, 75mm – Nikon D300

I should have probably gone out with a longer lens and I probably should have shot more depth of field.  Instead I focused on the eyes… like I always do with models.  The flowers in the background are a tad distracting as well.  Guess that just sort of sums up my emotions right now.

I’m challenged as I’d like to stay where I am to allow the kids to graduate from high school here.  But, to take photography to the next step, I probably need a bigger market.  Same for my current “real job” as an HR consultant.

Sorry for the venting I’ve done in this post – but if anyone has any positive vibes to shoot this direction, I’d appreciate it.

Patrick