For Christmas, my beloved Mr. Wonderful presented me with two fantastic Peter Lik photo books, one a Limited Edition photo book of his work in Las Vegas and beyond, as well as a book dedicated solely to Vegas. I always stop into Lik’s galleries in Vegas and Hawaii (those are the places I tend to travel most) to see some awe-inspiring landscape images, and are they ever. The Vegas galleries are really inspiring after a few cocktails. While looking through these awesome images, I was struck by the photos of Palm trees in Vegas. Being a Southern California resident who loves to visit Sin City, I must say I rarely look up to enjoy the beauty of the luscious palms. I don’t think I do that at home either.

Anyhow, while visiting the San Fernando Mission last week, I did precisely that: looked up. It’s amazing what you see up there:

I liked the idea of this solitary palm and bright blue sky. I just did a little bit of editing in Lightroom 3.

I loved the juxtaposition of the building and the palm tree. The color contrasts really grabbed me.

This might be my favorite palm tree image of the day. I know that one of the photographic “rules” is to have odd quantities of objects in photos, but I really liked how the breaking of this rule worked out for this pair. The bright blue sky and the greens just grabbed my attention.

Of course there are other trees in Southern California. One of my out of town visitors pointed this out:

This looks to be a Ceiba tree. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Of course I had to get a macro shot of those thorns:

I had an image previous to this one that was tighter on the tree, but the thorn was just too...shocking.

Thank you Mr. Wonderful for inspiring me with my Christmas gifts.

And thank you as always for stopping by!

I know I know, I have not posted in a week! Honestly, I am a sunshine lovin' girl, and the rain gets me down and feeling like a big slug. So, since it has been a week, I am going to pick my three favorite photos from the week, and give you the story and metadata behind those. Of course, you can check out my Flickr set for the week's photos, but I do want to tell you about my favorites so please make sure you keep on reading.

I made my favorite photo from this week on Day 22

I call this one "Mama's hands" because it is of my mama's hands. My mom has used her Brother sewing machine since 1968. Her hands are older now and have arthritis in them, but they are beautiful to me. That coupled with the light from her sewing machine created a perfect photo opportunity. I had her use the green fabric because I liked that pop of color, and noticed that her nail polish and the fabric complemented each other.

Taken with Canon 5D Mark 2, Tamron macro 90mm, 1/320 at f/4.0. Small tungsten light from sewing machine, no flash, ISO 4000 (The high ISO just isn't getting old for me!). Cropping and color correction in Lightroom 2.

I made my second favorite photo on Day 23 (I was on a roll this weekend!)

I just love walking around my neighborhood in the afternoon (around 4'ish) when the light has this gorgeous golden quality. My neighbors just cannot think I'm normal (but what photographer is?).

Initially I was trying to get this beautiful golden light bouncing off of the branches with the moon in the background. Then I shifted the focus to the moon, and I just loved this image. The branches and crisp moon against the vivid blue sky...magic!

Taken with Canon Rebel XTi at 1/320 at f/5.0 with Canon EF 24-105mm lens, at 105mm, ISO 200. Light editing in Lightroom 2.

And I made my third favorite photo on Day 25

Since was so cold here in Southern California (below 50 degrees, good heavens!), I got to sit by the fireplace a lot. I LOVE the way subjects look by firelight, and I LOVE reflections. So, I put some water in a Waterford crystal bowl, and had a little mirror that I set under the bowl on the hearth for reflection from the bottom of the bowl. Joe McNally suggests to place subjects near/in water, so of course I incorporated water into my little experiment.

Taken with Canon 5D Mark 2, Tamron macro 90mm, 1/30 at f/4.0, ISO 3200. Lighting sources fireplace and tungsten light to the right side of the camera.

As always, thank you for stopping by!