Fall Japanese Maple Photographs

At some point last spring I noticed the Japanese Maple tree in Camas, Washington by the library and grabbed my camera to go photograph it. When it came around to fall I figured it was time to take my camera back and take some more photographs of this same tree.

I often find I don’t have the time to sit down and look through my photographs,  but I have finally gotten to the photos I took of this maple tree in  downtown Camas, Washington in the fall.

I have seen photographs of the maple tree in the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon that are stunning and I thought I was finally going to get there this fall to go photograph it, but the Garden was closed for the fall! Next year I hope! This tree is probably equally as beautiful, but it is difficult to photograph it without getting cars, street, or buildings in the background. Still I enjoyed taking the time to take these photographs.

Portraits of a Nine Year Old in Portland

It has take a while for me to finally get around to taking my son’s nine year portrait photographs, but we finally did it despite is very clear protest. I really wanted a nice fall tree background so we headed down to Portland, Oregon near the airport to where I had seen a nice area of colorful trees recently.

Although my son did not want to cooperate we were able to catch a few portraits that will do. He tried hiding, climbing, making faces, and moving too much to get a clear photograph, but finally cooperated enough to satisfy this mamma and I am claiming victory and including this as my post for the weekly photography challenge!

Portraits of a 6 Year Old: Vancouver, WA

Yesterday I hopped over to a park in Vancouver, Washington with my children to take some portraits. This little girls has grown up so fast and after having her 6th birthday I had to find the time to take her photograph to send portraits to her relatives and to mark her growth through the years. We have a tradition of taking her photograph every year at the same park and it is fun to see her change!

After finishing the quick mini shoot yesterday I decided to take my photograph editing work to a coffee shop in Camas and work to get the basics of lightroom figured out. I had previously had a Photoshop elements program on my Macbook, but after that died I was forced to switch to Creative Suite. I found that there are some things that are a lot easier in Lightroom like if you have a photograph with a very similar exposure you can use the same setting from your last edit just by clicking ctrl-alt-v. I almost always ended up making some other minor adjustments, but this saved me some time.

So now that my youngest is off to school full time I have been thinking a lot more about what I am going to “do” with my time. I have been thinking about selling my landscape photographs on Etsy, starting to do birth photography, and doing more maternity and infant photography. I would love to do some traveling and take photographs on the road, i.e. will travel for work. 😉 I am also playing around with setting up a new blog if I do I will make sure to highlight that here.

Of course I will continue to spend time working on Brasier Law’s website and general online presence and being available to my kids. So for now I am free to explore my options and take landscape, close up, and portrait photographs as I see fit. 🙂

Japanese Maple Tree: WPC Intricate

This week I am sharing a few photographs of a Japanese maple tree that is in Camas, Washington outside the public library. When the leaves were just coming out this spring I stopped by and took a photograph with my phone, but I liked it so much I really wanted to return and take a few photographs with my DLSR camera as well.

I ended up not editing them right away, because I have been busy with my projects for Brasier Law, and now that I had time to edit them I am having to make do with software apps on an HP computer rather than my old trusty Apple. 😦 After 8 years my MacBook finally bit the dust and so I am readjusting and figuring out how to edit my photographs in different programs. I may end up going to back to Adobe here soon, but for now I am experimenting with some other programs. Nothing is comparing to good old photoshop elements so far.

So anyway feel like this tree has so many intricacies that it really fit the bill for this weeks photography challenge from WordPress. The bark, the leaves, the colors, the sunlight, nature just really knows how to perform doesn’t it?

Anyway, happy hump day!

Happy May Day: Flower Photography

When I was a kid my Mom used to help me leave flowers on neighbors doorsteps, ring the bell, and run away so they would be surprised by fun flowers on May Day. I am not very good at doing that these days, but I have fond memories of it.

Since I love photographing things in nature, flowers quite specifically, I thought I could do a version of the May Day flower basket here. 🙂

Enjoy and have a great weekend and month of May!

Orange Photograph Collection: WP Challenge 2

The tigers birthday, October 31.

Awesome color in fall.

Here is a collection of orange photographs from my site over the years. I had fun going back and seeing what I had taken photographs of that featured orange. It was amazing to me how many photographs I had that were dominated by the color orange.

There are photographs from all over the country also: Portland, Neskowin, & Salem, Oregon, Camas & Vancouver, Washington, Maine, and New York.

The photographs include portraits, events, sunsets, landscapes, and of course flowers. 🙂

I hope you enjoy looking back at my collection of orange photographs from the past as much as I did. Have a good week!

If you want to join the weekly photography challenge check out post a day.

Camas Lily Fields Abound

I know, I know I already used a few photographs of Camas lilies for a photo challenge, but I visited three very distinct Camas lily fields this year and so I wanted to share a few more photographs so I could really showcase all that the Pacific Northwest has to offer in the way of these beautiful wild flowers.

Just down the street from my home is a park called Round Lake, it is a part of the Lacamas Trail system which stretches for about 8 miles in it’s off shoots and winding trails that make their way through Camas, Washington.

At the top of Round Lake is an area that every year is covered in Camas Lilies for a few weeks of the year. These flowers make an amazingly short appearance and in the past although I have tried to catch them in bloom, things have gotten in the way. This year I  caught them, not once, but many times. I did not take my camera most of those times, so I finally made my dear friend Susan wait around while I snapped some photographs of the Camas flowers on our walk together. 🙂

As you can tell this is not a Camas LIly, but these were also in bloom on this hill, and are beautiful.

The top of Camas Lily Loop.

There are many other flowers in bloom up at Round Lake at this time of year, including these white lilies shown here, some tiny pink flowers, trillium, and skunk flowers. I have also seen wild bleeding hearts, salmon berries, and some bright orange flowers. It is a walk that is really worth your time.

The second field I, which was actually my first of the year, is down in Salem, Oregon at Bush Park. This is a place I have spent a lot of time in my life. We used to go there when I was child and it hosts the Salem Art Fair during the summer. During the spring this field is gorgeous and is frequently used as a portrait spot.

The last place to highlight is the West Linn Camassia Nature Preserve. This is a short, but lovely walk that really showcases the lilies. There is a trail that goes through the field with a well made path that helps to keep your feet from getting muddy and the flowers from being trampled.

I hope to add these three places to my yearly spring routine (the tulip fields in Woodburn are my other one).

I hope you all have had a good week and are getting out to enjoy spring!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Letters

These photographs were taken just outside of Portland in West Linn, Oregon at the Camassia Natural Area. This is a really easy walk that is stunning at this time if year. It is filled with blue Camas Lilies and little pink flowers, and tons of birds. The Nature Conservancy has supported this area, clearing it of ivy and creating a path so the flowers can be viewed, but protected. I think it is funny there is a sign to the high school that appears to be point at the field of flowers, I mean this area would be a great environment for learning. 🙂

You can join the Weekly WordPress Photo Challenge also just click the link. 🙂

Weekly Photo Challenge: Perspective

For this weeks weekly photography challenge I chose to share photographs that I took in Camas, Washington during our snow and ice store this year. I took these photographs on the third day of our winter storm. The first two days of the storm were fun, it snowed enough that we were able to take our sleds to the top of the hill down the street and go sledding for a couple hours.

The third day of the storm just turned into an icy mess which meant we were trapped in the house. I took this opportunity to go wander in the ice crusted snow for all of about 20 minutes before my fingers started to turn into icicles, I did get some photographs of Camas encrusted in ice during that time.

These photographs really shows my perspective of the storm and how I frequently see the world through my lens because many of these photos really focus on the details. I hope you enjoy them and I have to say they are reminding me of how happy I am to be seeing sunshine this week. 🙂

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Unusual POV

The weekly photo challenge unusual point of view (POV) creates an opportunity to look at subjects with new perspective. This is a photo of a flower I saw on a hike at the Tom McCall Wildlife Preserve.