Photography Contests Galore!

September 10, 2015January 17, 2016Leave a comment

September must be the month for photo contests. Birds & Blooms’ Backyard Photo Contest entries must be postmarked by September 15th, and entries for Solvay’s Specialty Polymer’s Business Group’s 2016 calendar are due on September 15th, as well. Entries for the 2015 Amarillo Tri-State Fair are due on September 17th.

Birds & Blooms – Backyard Photo Contest

I was cleaning up my office when I came across a page out of the September 2015 Birds & Blooms issue about a photo contest that I had intended to enter but had completely forgotten about. There are three categories in the competition – Best Flower, Best Bird, & Best Butterfly. I regularly take photos of all three of those items, so I decided that I’d go ahead and purchase one print to enter into each of the categories.

The flower photograph that I’m going to enter is a photo of some gladioli that I planted this year. I love that they’re tri-colored, because all of my other gladioli are only one color. I also think that our “rustic” fence makes a nice photo-background.

Backyard Gladioli

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Night Photos of La Ville Lumière

September 7, 2015January 17, 20163 Comments

Prior to embarking on our trip to France, I contacted a good friend of mine from college (Chris — who had just gotten back from Paris) to see whether or not he brought his tripod with him on their trip, and, if he did, whether or not it was worth the hassle. I brought my tripod with me on the December 2014 trip that Bryan and I took to New York City, but I did not use it a single time. I didn’t want to bring it along on our trip to France if it was just going to sit in our hotel room the whole time. Chris more or less said, Sarah — Paris is The City of Light, if you’re going to bring your tripod on only one trip, it should be this one. Chris took some excellent night shots during their trip to Paris, and he made a convincing argument in favor of toting a tripod overseas, so I made the decision to bring mine — and because I decided to bring it, I told myself that I would definitely use it — no ifs, ands, or buts.

For being such a populous city and popular tourist destination, it was surprisingly easy to find places in Paris to set-up a tripod (without inconveniencing others) in an attempt to get nighttime shots of many of their popular tourist destinations. Bryan patiently (and graciously) escorted me around the city late at night (it did not get dark in April until after 10 PM) so that I could take photos of the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, and Notre Dame.

The first stop that we made for nighttime pictures was Pont Alexandre III, one of the many bridges that crosses the Seine in Paris and a location that Chris suggested for getting photos of the Eiffel Tower at night. The location definitely did not disappoint, and being able to get portions of the bridge, the Siene, and a neighboring bridge all in the same photograph as the Eiffel Tower made the photos a little more interesting. Here are two of my favorite shots from that location.

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Les Jardins de Claude Monet

July 24, 2015January 17, 20161 Comment

During May 2015 we took a trip to France. After spending three full days in Paris, we rented a car to head out to Normandy and then on to the Loire valley. We stopped at Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny on our way from Paris to Bayeux. I’m not sure if the gardens of today are still true to how Monet planned them, but they were lovely nonetheless. I was particularly excited to get to see the ponds and water lilies and a slightly-modernized version of his Japanese bridge — both made famous by his impressionist paintings. I was truly amazed at the huge variety of plants and colors that were present in Monet’s gardens. I like to think that Monet put a lot of thought into designing the gardens and that maybe what is there today still looks like what he envisioned in his head…like a living work of art. We got a little bit turned around after we left the parking lot. There weren’t really any signs indicating where the entrance to Monet’s Gardens was, so we walked the wrong direction for a bit. We eventually gave up and turned around, and I took this photograph on our way to the entrance, not knowing that it was actually the back of Monet’s house. I thought that the shutters, vines, and colors were charming.