Maybe I will start some type of Norman Rockwell Experimentation. I really like these.

I was excited to show these off. :)  Here you go...Kaylee is getting some character...and man...she has beautiful big blue eyes.  What a cutie pie.  I think I'm in love....

Kaylee For President 2013!

Here she is crying when she just wakes up. I tried to put as much noise as I could into the photo to kind of make the photo move and vibrate.  High ISO, Slow Shutter.....everything.  Then I couldn't decide which one I liked best.  Now don't think I'm horrible.  I picked her up immediately after I hit the shutter button.  I want to remember EVERYTHING about her.   Including this at the time she is teething.  She is still beautiful no matter what she does.  I love her so much!

Those back teeth in this photo are the ones that are currently coming in. 

Nature Photography

Perhaps I should have called this blog My Summer Nature Photography.  It seems that the plants and animals are taking over this blog.  Man...I got to get out in the city or something to fix this.  In the meantime...here are some of yesterday's favorites:

This multiflora plant had a cameo in one of my earlier posts.  It is now flowering.  I played around with this one a little bit.  i think it would make a good background for a notebook or a title page or something.

This butterfly kept me busy for awhile.  I feel like this is a Lion King moment here.  He has conquered the leaf and is going to the cliff to stick out his chest.  Pretty cool.

This is for me more than anything else.  I have a freak obsession with aphids.  I think more people should spy on these guys.  They look like they might be plotting to take over the world.  I love the one red one in this shot.  It adds a nice contrast.

I told you I had some fun with this little guy.

A little peek at my drawing...and some more flowers. :)

Petunia.  My mother liked these when she was younger.  I remember something similar in my childhood.

I love the blue anthers here on the tip of the stamen.

Ha ha.  This is my distraction getting the best of me.  I decided to collect seeds from several of the flowers.  This year has been amazing for flowering plants.  In the process, I had run out of envelopes to collect them in, so I had to make my own.  Once I started creating, I couldn't stop and then had to try and draw the flower that I was packaging.  Then I decided maybe a photograph would capture the essence of the plant a little better.  So here it is.  A photo of my drawing of the real thing with the real thing.  Dianthus the Annual.

My mother also use to plant marigolds all around our double wide trailer.  They are great flowers because they seed so quickly and you can have multiple growths from the same plant in one season. They are also fabulous at keeping pests away from the other plants in your garden.

Another distraction.  I love insects.....especially tricky ones.  This is a bee fly......NOT a bee or a hornet.  It's from a completely different family.  It is more closely related to a house fly than a bee in many ways. :)  I think this one might be enlarged and hang in my new house soon!  :)

Kaylee...again.

I just really liked the lighting and the primary colors in this one.  I'm going to try and get a different subject matter this weekend to post.  This will be hard since I'm surround by humans most of the time!  :)

Look at those eyes.

One of my Favorite Subjects.

I love taking pictures of my daughter, Kaylee.  I have to observe her more often and more closely than normal when I do this.  I've got to be quick and not get too lost in the moments that I try to capture because she moves so quickly on to the next.  She is a fast little (or rather tall) 15 month old little girl.  Here she is in my neighbor's yard.  Janet, my neighbor, just got a sidewalk poured and Kaylee couldn't be happier about it.  Perhaps this means she's going to be a city girl?  Oh boy.

A Walk Around My Old Place.

Well...Ok.  It's not my old place yet...but it's close.  We will be moving soon and I have to highlight what I love so much about where I am now.
Dustin took Kaylee for a little walk.  We were going to go together, but I was so tired even thinking about walking down that crazy hill (I will document that for you later) so I said I would stay behind in the house.  When I went back into the house, I saw my camera and then I realized I could walk with them a little and take a little Mommy break.  I LOVE photography....if you didn't already know.  It is so healthy for me in so many ways.
 So...I left, with camera in hand, and traveled down the path to find my two Homo sapiens loves.  On the way I was distracted by some of the Earth's most victorious critters.   They outnumber all other class of organisms by far.  Here is a photo story of my little 15min. walk behind the old place.

Here was my first encounter.  Her name is Kelsey.  She is a Rescue Dog.  Beautiful and Graceful.

This is Jewel Weed.  It usually grows around poison ivy.  An oxymoron in a way.

It's a weed that most people kill.  Can you imagine.  Look at it's beauty.  Do you see the insects?

Same Weed.  Why would someone kill this?

Wild Berries.  Either Blackberry or Raspberry...I think.  They taste delicious.

I love this.

This little guy posed for me.  I believe it is a nymph of some sort or another. Maybe a Pennsylvania Leatherback?

Not quite ripe yet.  Who cares...it looks awesome!

There is some type of DISEASE killing this plant.  It ends up being absolutely breathtaking.  Perhaps the YANG to our YING is not such a bad thing.  It is apparently beautiful here.

I'm thinking about doing a series of photos that focus on certain techniques.  Kind of like Picasso did to reach himself.  This photo reminds me of that.  I have a lot of visual work to do.

And then this photo makes me wonder if I should just go to black and white.  This is the eloquent Cabbage Butterfly.  Wow.  I just can't even imagine what it would be like to fly and drift like this beautiful little thing that loves the evening hour.

More Weeds.  Really?  How can that be?  I think you are BEAUTIFUL.  Thank you for existing.

I fell in LOVE with some FLOWERS.

Check these beauties out.  It's with photographs like these that I just can't believe what a beautiful world we live in.  This is where I would love Louis Armstrong's "What a wonderful world" song to come on while you view.  I need to start making slideshows.  I think I need to take photographs so much because otherwise I would forget so much.  Thank you FLOWERS for reminding me of the worldly things (or should I say Godly things?)  that make a difference. What a Wonderful World.....

This might be my favorite.  It is so romantic.  I'm really not a good photographer.....this plant is doing all that....on it's own.

Even in color this defies gorgeous.

I have to remember to look through a different eye to really grasp the wonders of this physical beauty.

We were both visited by a friendly little fly.  Dipterans....so unique.

Another favorite.  Wow.  My eye keeps moving and these pretty little things keep floating.  I love it.  It's nice and balanced.

A different perspective.  Still Pretty.

An Incline Kiss

I took this May 26.  I think that still counts as the summer.  I'm still undecided about it.  I like the wood...but do I like the subject matter? I almost wish I was taller to get a different perspective. I feel like something is missing here.

Why am I doing this?

Since I left the academic world as a student, I've been struggling in finding ways to continue growing.  I love learning and in my adolescent years I wrote in a journal nearly every day.  For some reason that is the way that writing is a part of me.  I generally only write to get some type of emotion out of me so that I can better handle my world.  I also do this with art.  For right now...my visual outlet is photography.  I use to paint all the time....weekly if not daily at times in my life.
I have learned that I need to be in charge of my own growing and I realized that I learn the most about myself when I put my self out there by either writing or creating something visual.   A blog allows you to do both of these things.  The added bonus is that people can critique you, you get to learn a different perspective, and you grow. :)  So...please...critique away.

I don't know what it is...but something here captivates me.

My own backyard alley.  Not so scary after all.  I love how this little human art-form here is contrasted by all of the man built things surrounding her.  I will make this a poster print.  It has so much balance.

I was mesmerized by this little guy.  I believe it must be some type of nocturnal butterfly.  I do not think it's a moth at all.  It doesn't have the right antennas for that.  It stopped by the pool to take a drink at night. 

I like how the round design on the right echos the eyes of the Lepidopteran.  I'm not sure about the flow of this photo though.  I feel like my eyes don't quite travel to the left side far enough.

This is not in here for composition or contrast.  It is simply the subject matter here that completely cracks me up.  I only wish I had focused on the eyes....but the mouth is entertaining.  Ha ha ha!

This one is very strange to me.  But I like it. I like how the dark on left balance out the darkness of her eyes.  Then there is a black line to the right that also draws your eye through the picture.  It's interesting.

I like how the yellow hose pulls you in.

I think this needs lightened up somehow but I'm afraid about losing the detail if I do that.  Seeds.

The car frames her and moves my eye around.   The only thing I don't like is the dog behind her.  I feel like it sets it off balance.

The detail in this one just stops me short.  I can't stop looking at it.  The bottom of this photograph has a nice dark and "low pattern" area where your eyes can take a break.  Then the stem draws you back up into the dynamic flower.  This is one of my favorites this week.

So why am I doing this blog?   Because I want to grow and I want to share it with other people so that, if they are like me, they will learn a way to continue learning for the rest of their life and continue to grow in many many ways. Right now...everything is very visual for me so this is how I choose to document my life.  With all that being said, I hope you enjoy the photos and learn something new or at least got a smile from one of them.  Thanks for sharing!