Macros at the Arboretum

Last week, Annika's class took a trip to the arboretum near UW as part of their study of plants and their life cycles. I was fortunate enough to be able to go as a chaperone and am so glad I did. The kids were great and it was such fun to watch them learn from the arboretum staff as we wandered around the beautiful and lush grounds.

Honestly, we couldn't have gotten any luckier with the weather. It was warm and sunny the entire day. The muddy ground here and there was the only nod to the massively wet weather we've experienced lately. The kids shucked their coats and enjoyed the warm sun on their arms and faces for a bit. (What a novelty!!)

Before you wonder, yes, I did take photos of the kids and paid attention to them. In fact, I took a crazy amount of photos, but to respect the privacy of the non-my-child kiddos, I won't post any of them here.

That said, I did take a few moments here and there to snap some macro shots of the various flowers along the way, too. (Don't all field trip chaperones sling two cameras across their bodies while out with the students?)

Enjoy!

Yellow azalea

Pink azalea

Mushroom trio

Curly fern

Fuzzy fern

Teeny, tiny daisy

White rhodedentron

Shroom in profile  - up close and personal 

Macro Photography Homework

At this month's Mamas with Cameras meetup, our speaker was Sally Halvorsen, an incredibly talented macro photographer.

Sally spoke about her inspiration, the equipment she uses, how she sets up her shots, and how macro photography is her passion. Her goal is to capture the delicacy of flowers and plants ... and to photography each flower's "face".

She was inspiring and entertaining, so say the least. At the end of the meetup, Sally challenged each of us to pull out our macro lenses and put them to work. It didn't take much for me to do exactly that after hearing Sally talk about her love of this art form. A couple of days later, out came my camera, tripod, light box (for fruit photos because the rain drove me back inside), and macro lenses. I struggled with my Lensbaby lens (need more practice, obviously), but feel like I did a pretty good job with my standard macro lens.

I look forward to some more breaks in our wet weather so I can head outside again to try shooting more than only the tulips in our front yard!