I'm a freelance writer, artist and photographer. I write mostly for business, not enough for pleasure, and I take a lot of pictures of the world around me.
If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.
Today I’m participating in Floral Friday Fotos. You can click on each photo for a larger view. If you enjoy my photos, I encourage you to subscribe and receive updates when I post new photos, usually 3 to 5 times a week.
There are plenty of dogwood trees in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. and I was lucky to be visiting when the trees were starting to bloom. Although dogwood trees blossoms can be vary from white / yellow to pink, my favorite ones have to be the red blossoms. I saw one dogwood tree with red blossoms while visiting Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. I understand Jefferson himself planted most of the dogwood trees there so their age may explain why they’re so big.
You don’t often see trees with so many red blooms so it was a pleasure to photograph, even though the lighting was challenging since it was in the middle of the day, and it was a warm, sunny day. Perfect day to visit Monticello, walk the grounds and take pictures like these.
What’s your favorite kind of dogwood tree blossoms?
Floral Friday Fotos: Red dogwood tree bloomsRed dogwood tree blossomsClose-up of dogwood tree red blossomsDogwood tree – red blossoms
If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.
You can click on each photo below for a larger view. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe so you can enjoy the new photos I post a few times a week.
During our spring vacation in the Mid Atlantic states, we stayed a few days in a guest house not too far from Richmond, Virginia. The area was very green and wooded, with homes spread far apart. We didn’t spend much time at the house but one evening, while I was doing the dishes after dinner, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a deer a few hundred feet away from the house. I grabbed my camera and told my kids to follow me as we slowly made our way around the house to see what was going on.
By the time we got to the other side of the house, there weren’t one, but two deer standing there, staring at us and ready to hop away. The sun had already set and it was a challenge to take a few pictures because of the lack of light and the far distance. By the time I managed to snap a few pictures, the deer’s patience had run out and they started walking away. That’s where we realized there were two more deer hiding in the trees behind them. We’ve spotted a mule deer here and there while hiking about San Diego but this is the first time we’ve seen four deer together so close to us. One of the many great experiences we took away from our trip!
Have you been able to get really close to deer before? Or would you rather stay away?
Two deer in VirginiaDeer standing in the grass and trees in Virginia
If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.
I’m back! Well, the truth is, I came back from our East Coast trip a couple of weeks ago but I’ve been spending the past few weeks catching up on work projects, chasing new ones, and taking care of a few pressing matters. I haven’t even gone through all the photos I took during our trip, and believe me, I’ve got my work cut out! So I’ll be sharing the beautiful sights I saw with my own eyes while visiting Washington D.C, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia over the next few weeks. Or many months, seeing how many pictures I took!
Today I’m taking part in the Macro Monday photo challenge. You can click on each photo for a larger view. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe so you can enjoy the new photos I post a few times a week.
This is the first time I’ve seen a zebra swallowtail butterfly and I had to travel 3000 miles to do that. We have some tiger swallowtail butterflies here though. This zebra swallowtail was flying a lot more than he was stopping, so I had to chase it on foot for a while until I managed to take these few pictures. By the way, you’ll notice he’s missing part of his tail.
I took these pictures while visiting Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful home and estate near Charlottesville, Virginia. If you haven’t been, it’s worth the visit. One of my favorite places in Virginia by far.
Macro Monday: my first zebra swallowtail butterflyClose-up of a zebra swallowtail butterflyZebra swallowtail butterfly on yellow buttercup
If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.
Yesterday I headed eastbound with my kids for a two-week trip that is taking us to Washington D.C., Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. I’m hoping to have a lot of photos to share when I come back.
In the meantime I won’t be on the web much as I left my computer home. Can you say computer withdrawal. It’s good I still have my phone and a tablet with me. Phew!
Happy spring break if that’s the time of year for you too, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.
I said in a previous post I would share my amateurish experience on a photoshoot, so here it is! I encourage you to click on each photo to see a larger view. If you like what you see, please subscribe to this blog to receive updates of the new photos I post, usually 3 to 5 times a week.
A couple of weekends ago, I visited the SeaLife aquarium next to LEGOLAND California. They recently added a sea jelly exhibit (also known as jelly fish, even though they are not fish), which contains several tanks with various species of jellies swimming around. The lighting of the exhibit is very colorful, which makes it for a fun visual experience, but not so great for photos since many of the lights reflect onto the tanks, making for photos covered with many colored spots. The water tanks are cylindrical so people can view the sea jellies from all around. Again this is great for viewing but not so much for taking photos since you can see the people on the other side of the tank. If you’re patient, you can wait until they leave and find the right angle. Or you can play around in Photoshop as I did for one of the photos below since the background was very compromised.
There were several tanks with moon jellies but I won’t share any photos here because they didn’t come out well that day. I do have photos of moon jellies if you’re interested in viewing them.
These first creatures are called Northeast Pacific sea nettles. This is the second photo I took in the exhibit with my good camera.
Northeast Pacific sea nettle
And right then and there, my camera shut down because the battery was dead. Hum, no problem, I thought, I’ll just use the other battery I have in my bag. This would have been a brilliant idea if I had actually remembered to charge that other battery when it died a few weeks ago. So there I stood, dozens of cool sea jellies floating around me with no working camera. But wait, I had my cell phone camera with me. 5MP would work but how about the lighting? And that’s when I thought, what the heck, I have nothing to lose.
So here they are, the rest of my sea jelly photos, taken with my cell phone camera and retouched in Photoshop since I couldn’t change any settings as I took the photos. Even though a lot of the photos were blurry and useless, I’m quite impressed with the way these came out.
Northeast Pacific sea nettle
I love the golden brown color of their bodies, especially when it’s backlit as in the photo.
Golden brown body of a Northeast Pacific sea nettle
This next and last one is a spotted lagoon jelly, a smaller species of jellies. I took a lot of pictures of them but this is the crispest one I managed to get. However the background was horrible, between the many light reflections and several people standing right there. So I decided to delete the whole background and add one in Photoshop, almost black but not completely, with a light grain to match the not so perfect tank water.
If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.
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