Blogger Community Challenge - Flowers

Marie changed things up for the current challenge...Here's what she wrote: "There will be two challenges this week that will be posted....THIS one will only last a week & the following week you will have the opportunity to vote on your favorite image. This week's, challenge is "Flowers". You can do a flower garden, a macro, landscape image with flowers. It can be any kind of photo as long as it has a flower in it.Post your images on your Blog. Come back here & click on the blue button below & follow the easy instructions. This challenge starts today & ends on Monday, June 21, the voting starts on the 21st, ends on the Monday the 28th."



(Click on the banner below to visit the Challenge Blog and see the other images)




My flower image was shot in April at the Willow Wood Arboretum in Morris County, NJ. That park is a real treasure and I STILL haven't finished culling the bad ones and processing the keepers, but I loved this Golden Poppy:

Bloggers Community Photo Challenge: RULE OF THIRD CONTEST

This is a fun way to learn about photography...one of the fundamental rules (and one of the main one that can be broken with great results once you've mastered it) is the Rule of Thirds. It's more of a suggestion than an actual rule, but is something that's very important for photographers to understand. There are also some 'rules' for this contest:

1. All images will be a certain size 72 DPI 4X6(432 pixels X 288 Pixels) Try to get as close as you can, no larger.

2. No watermarks, signatures or copyrights symbols on photos.

3. To submit,you must send a copy of your image to me @ Mariebm56@aol.com & I will add all photos to a post. Please label the subject area - Challenge Contest. Days to submit photos JUNE 10 & 11th only. We should have the voting on the 13 & 14th.

4. Our team members/judges will decide which best follow the challenge & also include good photographic qualities.(sharpness, contrast, color or B&W)Once our team makes the final selection, we will leave it up to our community to vote on the winner.

I'm sending one of the images below to Marie for the contest...want to guess which one? :)

Blogger Community Photo Challenge: FLOWERS

The last challenge before the summer break is Flowers. To visit the Challenge Blog and the links to all the other entries, click on the banner below:

Blogger Community Photo Challenge: Tranquility

(click the banner to go to the Challenge and to view the other entries)

This week's challenge is "Tranquility"...a very ephemeral thing. It's not something you can describe in concrete words...it's a feeling more than anything else. Not everyone will agree with everyone else about what's tranquil, or at least the first thing to come to mind for one person will not be what a second person will think of right out of the box. I have a ton of photos that I consider tranquil, but this is one of my newest, so I thought I'd use it. It's a photo of a wildlife viewing area on Sandy Hook, part of the Gateway National Park System--a wonderful place for viewing wading birds. Hope others find it as tranquil as I do.



The same day, I took the following photograph. I always find flowers a tranquil subject...this is no exception:

Tulips on a Hill

The skies have mostly been gray here, which kind of matched my frame of mind. For those of you who don't know, I lost one of my sisters a couple of weeks ago and then, on top of that sadness, ended up with a sore throat/fever/headaches/etc. The weather here has mostly matched how I was feeling. Last Friday, the sun came out and the day was glorious. I grabbed my camera (my NEW 40D--another long story) and headed to my favorite garden spot to check out the tulips. It was late in the day and I was able to get some great photos of the flowers with great light. This is just one of the many images I captured that day. I guess I'm coming out of my funk.

Blogger Community Photo Challenge: Birdhouses

Thought I'd be really pro-active this week and post my photo at the beginning of the challenge, instead of at the very end just under the wire. I just got some new plug-ins for photoshop and decided this would be a great chance to play with them. I took a photo that wasn't the best one and tried to make it better using onOne's PhotoTools2 and PhotoFrames4. I think the photo turned out nicely...so am anxious to use it on a photo that starts out as a good one. :) Here's my entry for "Birdhouses:"

Blogger Community Photo Challenge: Close Ups

The current challenge is Close ups...and I'm lucky that the Deep Cut Orchid Show took place last week at a location very near me. I went there three out of the four days it ran and had a lot of fun shooting the orchids. They are such weird flowers--some look like faces, some look like aliens...all are beautiful! Here are a sampling of some of my shots with my macro lens. Hope you enjoy...

Hearts Challenge

The Bloggers' Community Challenge "Hearts" is in progress. It's just for fun, no voting on this one. To check out the information for this challenge, and to see the other entries, click on the banner below:



My entry below was taken in St. Augustine, Florida. These flowers were growing in the courtyard of the bed & breakfast where we stayed, and they really did look like there were hearts in the flowers.

Hearts 'n Flowers