He Still Brings Me Flowers...

I think it's wonderful ...

that after almost 18 years of marriage,

Paul still thinks to bring me flowers home sometimes :D

Also Bugs brought home this gorgeous little Brownie from his girlfriend's Nan's loft.

I think I am in love!

Just a shame it'll cost sooo much to get what's needed to take some snaps with it :(

A little Dose of Summer

Nature on My Doorstep...

My poor sorry little neglected photo-blog ~ I though you needed some cheering up!

I wrote a little ditti...

Here's a little taste of the nature on my doorstep this time of year!

The hunter...

And the hunted,

They are all

welcome here.

No creature is too great,

And none ...

too

small.

Every elegant weed,

Every wide open sky.

Every tall tree,

Every flower before my eyes.

The shafts of light from the sun,

Every dew drop hung.

Every feathery leaf,

Every bloom from beneath.

Every thistle and nettle,

Every bright yellow petal.

Each One makes me glad,

Summer's come!

You Capture ~ Green...

Warning ~ spiders!

If can cope than keep going slowly and admire these amazing creatures up close and personal!!

If you can't scroll quickly!!


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ok ~ that's the spiders done with, but I have another creepy crawly about the house these days...

It's been lovely to let Baby crawl about outside this week...

Whilst we have been enjoying a dose of 'Indian summer'

It's not normal for blue skies at the end of September to herald 26C weather, rather they usually bring a deep chill ~ but not this week :-)

This week we got to revel in Summer's last foray ~ about time too ~ this is the best weather we've had since April!!

And next week it will be over ~ and we will be back to wooly jumpers, and lighting fires before we know it.

To join in this week with You Capture, head on over to see Beth & link up :-)

Texture Tuesday ~ Autumnal "Do"

Joining in today with Kim's Texture Tuesday ~ her theme this week was 'DO'.

There wasn't much this poor butterfly could DO, but hang on tight whilst the wind blew VERY hard against our trampoline net ~ it was there quite some time, going nowhere in a hurry, just trying to survive!

(Mouse over to see all the 'before' images)

These Lillies were my 2nd gift from Paul ~ in celebration of our 16 years of "I Do!"

All edited with Kim's 'Autumn Burst' texture.


Link op over HERE.

Shoot and Edit: Week 34 - Ocean/Pool/Lake/River

As Ashley was busy showing us this week how her editing has changed, I thought I'd join her!

I took this photo in July 2009, on my old Canon S3 (jpg)

It's taken down by our village brook and I loved the way the light was twinkling on the water.

I edited it at the time like this... 

Can you say with me ~ YUK! 

What was I thinking that that 'canvas' effect looked good? 

The original was sharper and brighter! 

Definitely an argument for 'if you don't know what you're doing leave well alone!!'

So today I revisited it ~ with LR3 and two years of know-how...

BEAUTIFUL!

(well I think so..!)

My main aim was to POP to the colours in the flowers and enhance the sparkles on the water. Lightroom makes this kind of image a breeze :)

Here's my settings;

 Basic: Temp 0, Tint +3, Exp -0.97, Recovery 100, Fill 10, Blacks 2, 

Brightness +60, Contrast +60

Clarity +54, Vibrance +40, Saturation +20

Tone Curve: medium contrast (no changes)

Detail: Sharpness 31, Radius 1.0, detail 53, Masking 77

Noise Reduction: Luminance 22, detail 91, contrast 16, colour 100 (detail 90)

Lens Correction: defringe all edges

Effect: Very slight vignette (-10,54, +31, 77, 0)

Link up over at Ashley's blog to see her's and other's edits of their watery shots this week.