Phlowers and Photography, or, Flowers and Fotography

The English language is interesting, is it not? Anyway, that's not what this post is about. It's about Mother's Day, and how my kids bless me. I'm perfectly happy with a call, a visit or a card, but they almost always go beyond that.

A lovely assortment of gifts from Natalie, Nathan's sweetheart, included this gorgeous calla lilly.

Andrea and the kids stopped by with this beautiful lace cap hydrangea.

This next photo isn't terribly interesting, but I sure had fun taking it.

You see, it was taken from probably about 30 feet away. Nathan heard me say I wanted to get myself a remote switch for my camera, and surprised me with one.  Of course, no birds landed on the feeder on my first trial run. I think the presense of the camera and tripod kept them away. So I'm going to let the empty tripod set there for a while to get them used to it. I did get a visitor at the tube feeder, but it was getting pretty dark for picture taking by that time. I had to lighten the photo a good bit.

I'm really excited about the process of getting some good wildlife closeups. I need to learn how to use the manual part of my camera. I see such wonderful photography on so many blogs and I want to get better. Most of the photos on this blog up to now, were taken with my Canon A20 point and shoot. It takes great pics, is simple to use, and I love it. The kids all went together and got it for me for Christmas one year. Recently I saved and bought myself a used Canon 20D SLR. Now I need to learn how to really use it....as in "what's an aperture or an F stop?"