Raindrops {Photo Dump} + A Favor?

July 31, 2017 | Allison

Some days I step outside, look around, and go right back in for my camera because it’s too beautiful not to. I love just walking around, taking pictures of the little beauties I find. Because that’s how to be a good photographer, you know. You have to go looking for photo opportunities, not just wait for them to find you.

Sometimes the best photos are of the little things no one else takes time to notice. I like to think that through your camera lens, anything can be beautiful. ♥ Even thorns.

I love how these pictures turned out! Who knew raindrops on asparagus plants could look so neat? 😀

Beautiful zinnias…

I’m a little proud of these next pictures. XD I just LOVE how the raindrops reflect color onto the Japanese beetles!

Sparrows on a barn roof. 🙂

Phew, that was a lot of pictures! I hope you enjoyed them, dears. 🙂

BUT WAIT! Before you go, could you do me a favor? I’m entering some photographs in our county fair, but I can’t decide which of these to enter in each category. Would you mind voting for your favorites in the comments?

Wildlife:

Should I do…

1. The butterfly?

2. The snail?

Rural _________

1. Mountain?

2. Golden dust? XD

3. Fall evening?

People:

1: My dad?

2. My sister? (I would crop and edit this a little bit more.)

Landscape:

Should I do this sunset…

Or one of the Rural ______ ones?

Thank you guys so much!

Would you like to see a post of the rest of the pictures/items I’m entering in the fair?

Do you like photographing little things and raindrops?

***Allison***

I Got a New Camera Lens! {+Photo Dump}

May 6, 2017May 6, 2017 | Allison

Hmm, I’ve made better titles. *Wince* You know you’re a photographer when you’re that excited over a new camera lens. XD BUT SERIOUSLY! I AM EXCITED!

I just ordered a new lens for my camera, and I am loving it! It’s a Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8 lens (see it here on Amazon), in case you were wondering. 🙂 *Update: Whoops, I accidentally said “zoom lens” at first, but I don’t think it’s actually a zoom lens. O.o* I love all the beautiful blur and bokeh it makes in the background with the subject in sharp focus. The one thing I don’t like is that I can’t get super close-up pictures unless I crop them smaller. But anyway, I’ll keep experimenting, and in the meantime, how would you like to see about a million or so pictures? Okay, maybe closer to a thousand, but still. 😉 😛

First I want to show you the difference between my old lens and my new lens. The next (awful) picture was taken with my old lens at ISO 800.

TERRIBLE! But the next picture was taken with my new lens at ISO 800. It’s so much brighter because it goes down to an aperture of 1.8 instead of 4 something, which means it lets in a ton more light and thus makes the entire picture brighter. Ta-daa! (Okay, I know it still isn’t a beautiful picture, but my youngest brother kindly brought the iris in for me to take pictures of with my new lens and I decided to experiment. 🙂 ) So in conclusion, this new lens is way better for indoor photography and other low-light situations.

Now for the actually pretty pictures. 🙂 Get ready for lots of raindrops, snails, and flowers!

I had to up the ISO quite a bit here so it’s kind of grainy, but I still like it. 🙂

Ohhhh this next one is one of my favorites!

As you can see, it was getting pretty dark when I took this picture. I think it looks kind of neat that way though!

I got quite a few pictures of this cute little snail meandering over a bush. 🙂

AWWWWW he’s so cute! 😀

↓This poor guy’s shell looks a bit shattered.

The next two photos are a little different. For the first one I shined (or is it shone?) a flashlight close to the drops, and for the second one I used flash. *GASP*, she used flash?! I know it does look a bit flash-y, but I thought it was worth it to capture the neat glittery effect.

Moss pink are such adorable, bright flowers!

Yep, it’s a fly. 🙂

Lily of the Valley flowers are such charming little things, but goodness gracious, their perfume is so strong it nearly knocks you over! (Ha ha, I guess it can be that way with humans too. XD )

I really like the next picture for some reason. It’s so crisp in the foreground and beautifully blurred in the background.

Ahh, so pretty!

I love this next picture! The blur makes it look so much more professional! 😀

Taking pictures of clouds and landscapes isn’t really what this lens is made for (you can’t zoom out far enough), but I did get a decent picture of part of a cloud.

PHEW! Are you still here? If you are, congratulations on making it through all those pictures. XD I hope you liked them!

Do you think snails are cute? Do you love raindrops on things as much as I do?

Have a lovely day, dear readers!

***Allison***

{Field and Flower}

April 26, 2017 | Allison

Last Sunday we had a lovely afternoon.

After church we had a belated but absolutely delicious Easter lunch at my grandparent’s house with our cousins.

Afterwards the kids went down to play with Marigold, a sweet, tame cat who lives in the barn.

We got distracted from the cat by a game of “Who Can Find the Tallest Dandelion.” If you have never played that game, I highly recommend it. 🙂 Sometimes the simplest, happy things are the best things.

We have hundreds and thousands of dandelions around our farm, and some of them grow over two feet tall in the fields. Seriously.

I won the contest that day, but today my brother found what could be the record breaker: a whopping 27 inch tall dandelion.

We graciously fed our dear rabbits some of the losing dandelions. Lily sat there contentedly, not moving except for her mouth and nose, slurping up dandelion stems like spaghetti. We tried not to let the dandelions run out, but eventually they did. Until they stopped she just nibbled away one after another, looking mildly disinterested and rather sleepy.

Then we gathered eggs – a not very lovely part of the afternoon, because they were extremely dirty and it took forever. The good thing is, it didn’t actually take forever, because we finished eventually.

When we were doing the dandelion contest earlier, I had noticed the beautiful crimson clover and vetch blooms in the fields. After eggs, I ran down to the house and grabbed my camera straight away.

And so here are the photos. I love the peaceful, beautiful, serene atmosphere of them. ♥

And I love that little things like dew drops and triticale and even weeds like dandelions can be so pretty and graceful.

*Happy sigh* I really enjoyed this photoshoot and I hope you did too! Thank you for persevering through allllll of those pictures. 🙂 Do you have a favorite or favorites?

Have a wonderful day! ♥

***Allison***

Beautiful Things {Part 2}

April 12, 2017April 12, 2017 | Allison

I’m really excited to show you guys this edition of “Beautiful Things”!” 🙂 Today I have a bunch of pictures of little beauties, like spring flowers and grass. Little things are probably my favorite photography subjects.

DSC_1129 (1280x853) — Yes, I know henbit is a weed, but I still think it’s pretty when it’s all crowded together in a sea of purple!

DSC_1137 (1280x853) — Side note: we were studying weeds today for Nature Study, and we found and identified eighteen different kinds on our short walk! O.o

tag (1) (1280x853) — OOH I LOVE THIS ONE! I like how dark and dramatic it is. The manual settings on my camera were a bit off, but it turned out neat that way.

tag (4) (1280x853) — I found a lot of these next flowers at the arboretum.

tag (7) (1280x853) — I love these purple flowers! Purple is a wonderful color, don’t you agree? 😀

tag (6) (1280x853) — I always like seeing bees up close in photographs like this.

tag (10) (1280x853) — Such a lovely sunny picture!

DSC_1542 (1280x853) — One of our friends found this extremely odd-looking dandelion when we were on our Nature Walk today. Yes, all of those dandelion heads are on that one huge stem! (Although the stem got kind of split and smushed…)

tag (13) (1280x853) — Warning: I may hyperventilate about these next few photos just a bit…

tag (14) (1280x853) — AHH I LOVE DEW DROPS!

tag (15) (1280x853) — AHH THEY MAKE ME SO HAPPY!

tag (16) (1280x853) — I DON’T KNOW WHY BUT THEY REALLY DO!

tag (17) (1280x853) — Ohhh this one might be my favorite. I took these pictures just after a rain when we were walking down to our pond to try to find the muskrat that lives there. (Unfortunately, we only caught a glimpse of him. 😦 )

tag (18) (1280x853) — The phlox in our flowerbed and everyone else’s is simply breathtaking! They’re so brilliant and colorful!

That’s all for now, folks! At least I’ve made a dent in my pictures… but only a dent. It’s spring, so of course I can’t keep up! Whenever I post 10 pictures I take 20 more. XD

What do you think of my “Beautiful Things” series so far? Which was your favorite picture? DO YOU LOVE DEW DROPS TOO?! (*Ahem,* sorry.)

***Allison***

Drops of Silver

June 5, 2016June 27, 2016 | Allison

Like drops of liquid silver

Capturing the light.

Clinging, falling,

Slipping, rolling:

A silver shower.

If you’ve followed this blog for long, you’ll know that I simply love dew drops or raindrops or anything of the sort. 😀 The raindrops on these leaves looked so silvery and beautiful that I couldn’t resist taking pictures of them.

Here’s a picture of a bedewed peony bud to add in. 😀

Ahh, so pretty!

And lastly, I made a little edit with one of these pictures. I really love this Bible verse! It’s one of my favorites. Does anyone else know the song with these words? I really love that song too. 🙂

Have a wonderful Sunday!

***Allison***

P. S. The flock of chickens we have right now is going to be taken away tonight! (We have around 24,000 chickens, (yes, seriously!) although it gets less toward the end of a flock like this.) WOOP WOOP! That means we won’t have to gather eggs for a few months until a new flock arrives. YAY! But then at the beginning of the new flock we have to weigh each of the thousands of eggs before putting them in flats, which takes quite a while to say the least. Ugh! Well, I’ll just not think of that yet. 🙂

Birthday Hike

May 29, 2016May 29, 2016 | Allison

Hey guys! I took gobs of pictures on the hike I went on for my birthday. Lots. Of. Pictures. I’m going to be showing you only some, but still a ginormous amount. 😀 Are you ready for this? Okay. Blastoff in 3… 2… 1… 1/2… 1/4… 1/187,990… okay, okay. XD Now!

When we went on the first trail, it was really foggy and rainy. We decided to come back to it later when it was sunny, but I got some neat pictures before we left.

hike (2) (1024x768) — Ooh, spooky. Just kidding! 😀

Doesn’t the next one seem sort of like a writing prompt? (I edited it.)

Next we went on a hike that was lovely and beautiful on the way down, but exhausting on the way up.

Flower pictures. 🙂

I love this dewdrop picture:

I have no idea what these weird corncobby fungi things are, but they’re neat looking!

One tree had all kinds of different fungi on it.

Millipede!

The next trail was really rocky and mossy. I love rocks and moss! 😀

hike (53) (1024x768) — This looks like an action shot even though it isn’t.

Sometimes you had to climb over boulders like this:

I made collages of the many pictures of moss and fungus I took, because otherwise you would be here all day. XD

Aren’t they so pretty? (And sometimes weird?)

Views from an overlook beside the path:

I really like the rocky ones.

At the top it was kind of scary because there were drop-offs on every side of you, and the path was really narrow. You had to climb over boulders that were less than two feet away from the edge to get to the top! *Shiver* 😛 But the view was amazing!

On the way down we made a little fairy house, or rather fairy bedroom.

My friend spotted these perfect, tiny spiderwebs. She got way better pictures than me. 😉

Are you photo-weary yet? XD Did you have a favorite picture?

***Allison***

Art Lab, Episode #2: Dewdrops

April 15, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

I’m back with another episode of ArtLab!

If you recall, Hayley and I just recently started a collab series called Art Lab, where we post art inspiration and our art. (Read our first post here.) It’s my turn to post today, so I present… Episode 2: Dewdrops!

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I have both a word prompt and a photo prompt for today’s inspiration. Bonus point! XD

Prompts:

The word prompt is *drum roll please* dewdrops! I love dewdrops!

The photo prompt is a picture I took recently of grass bedecked with dew drops. Ahh…. 😀 (See more dew pictures in this post.)

Art:

This card I made looks sort of like the photo prompt, only I didn’t see the words “Happy Birthday” floating in the grass photo. XD

Here are a few tips for making the card:

Hang a dewdrop from any curved part of a letter, and if you really want to sprinkled them on, add some to a horizontal line as well (like on the cross of the “H”).
Once you’ve colored the grass with different green colored pencils, you may need to trace over some of the grass blades again with a pencil to sharpen their outlines.
To make the grass in the front look closer to you, make the dewdrops sharper and darker, and make the ones hanging from the back grass more faded.

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I also drew this snail-on-a-leaf ATC which uses the word prompt.

A few tips for drawing this:

I drew this using different “levels” of pencils. I used a 5B pencil for some of the darker parts, like the shading of the dewdrops and the leaf stem. The higher up you go in B pencils, the softer and darker they will draw, and the higher up you go in H pencils, the harder and lighter they will draw. (For instance, a 6B pencil has a really soft lead that draws a fuzzy, dark line. A 9H pencil has a really hard lead that draws a sharp, faint line. Normal pencils are usually somewhere in the middle of the two.)
Play around with the design inside of the snail’s shell.
You don’t have to do this in pencil! Try using markers, watercolors, or colored pencils.

Thanks for joining me! I hope you were inspired to go make some art!

_____________________________________________________

***Allison***

Dewy

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016 | Allison

Okay, after all of those exciting announcements, I think I’m finally ready to start posting some of those gazillion photos I wanted to show you! Today I have a photoshoot of one of my favorite subjects: dewdrops!

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I love these next three pictures! The dew drops look like gleaming crystal marbles perched delicately on the leaves. I love how the dew drops look so fresh and plump and individual instead of squashed together like some dew drops do. GAAH! It’s so pretty. 🙂 Don’t the leaves look like mini lettuce heads? XD

Dew on grass… *Happy sigh* I did a post with more of pictures like this here.

This next plant looks like it’s saving some water for later by storing it in a leaf cup.

Look at the bokeh on these next few pictures! *Triumphant smile* XD XD

Dew on garlic grass…

I love this next picture too! Isn’t it so neat? Look at the reflection in the water drops.

I also love these pictures! ↓ (I seem to love most of them, don’t I? 😀 ) The “grass blades” are actually triticale from the field behind our house.

Ahh… I just love dew drops! Which picture was your favorite?

***Allison***

Photos from of Old: Entry 3

March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 | Allison

About time for another one of these, eh? These photos were taken in the summer of 2013.

First some snail pictures… (I remember I was pretty proud of these when I took them. XD And I still like them!)

Now some flowers…

2013-06-09-Allison 007 (1280x960) — Coreopsis

2013-07-04 Allison 027 (1280x960) — Tiger Lily

I took this picture one night when after a family walk. Isn’t it adorable? (All of these next few pictures are edits of the original.)

edited carmen in the middle 1.jpg — My dad, my littlest sister Carmen, and my mom. 😀

carmen in the middle (1280x960) — It looks cute in B&W too. 🙂

edited carmen in the middle 2 — Carmen is a rainbow!

I requested my siblings to pose for this one; I think I meant it to look similar to the last photo. They look so cute and tiny (well, younger at least XD) in this photo!

2013-07-04 Allison 107 (1280x960) — Megan, Carmen, and Jeff. Just look at Carmen’s little curly head!

An edited clouds-over-field photo…

And lastly, two miscellaneous nature photos: a mushroom and bedewed leaf.

Thanks for time-traveling with me!

***Allison***

P. S. Recently my littlest sister Carmen has been determined to learn how to fly. XD XD XD She asks Mom if it’s possible for people to fly, and Mom explains that God just didn’t make humans to able to fly. But she thinks that maybe she’ll be the first person ever to do it! XD XD XD It cracks me up! But it’s adorable too. 😀 Hey, we all wish we could fly, right? One can always dream…

P. P. S. I have 111 followers! Besides the fact that that’s amazing, and “Thank you so much guys,” (but seriously – THANK YOU!), isn’t 111 such a fun number?! XD