colorful sunset

was at mom's house a few weeks ago and i walked in the kitchen and it looked like the sky was on fire.
i grabbed my camera and headed outside.  within 3 minutes, it was gone.  luckily, i caught it all on camera.
here is a log of it:  these are UNTOUCHED.  these are right out of my camera.  totally honest  about that. nathaniel can vouch that they were actually that bright and red/pink/orange. 

NCSU Belltower and Dandelions in February (for Chris)

I took a ton of pictures at the Belltower.  My challenge was "perspective" (meaning I was trying to get something looking dimensional) in which a corner was involved.  I started with the KK building, but that didn't work so well.  The angle of the building just didn't work for it.  I thought the belltower may work but, to my surprise, it is REALLY hard to get that pointy sky scraper to be angled right in the lens.  Here are a few examples of my bad pictures:

here are a couple that i actually like, with their black and white equivalent.  i was actually shooting in black and white (my screen was showing black and white).  these still have their flaws, though.  both are a little crooked.  but, like i said - standing beneath it, it is hard to get it straight! 

 

This one is my favorite from the lunch break session.  I noticed some daffodils blooming and I took my camera OFF my neck and just held it off the ground and started clicking (on auto setting).  Out of about 10 shots, three turned out in focus (i had on my 50mm lens and i was close - so the focus range is different than my other lenses).  The other two shots were crooked though.  This one is just gorgeous though.  

And, this picture is totally for Chris.  PROOF that dandelions were blooming in early February in Raleigh! Date taken was February 7th, 2011!

Krispy Kreme

During lunch a couple of weeks ago, I went over to Krispy Kreme on the corner of Peace and Person Streets in Downtown Raleigh.  I stood right in the middle of the intersection to take the first picture.  Traffic was light, obviously.  These were all in manual mode.

The "hot donuts now" sign was NOT ON.  Thus, I did not buy a donut.  I'm not a huge donut fan.  But even I cannot resist a fresh one...  

here i was going for the reflection of the KK sign in the windows of the resturant...

a late afternoon walk

 i'm playing catchup with photos if you can't tell.  here are some from a late afternoon walk with granddaddy.  first stop:  the garden, where kendal and holly helped him pull up old corn stalks (after they posed by a tree).  the late afternoon light was so amazing this evening.

next, we stopped by the gravel pile so kendal and holly could fill their pockets with rocks.  they owe duncan at least $10 for the amount of gravel they've stolen by now!

 then we walked down to the creek to see if we could spy a beaver, which we didn't.  we did however see some cattails and i took a second to see if i could catch a rainbow in my camera.  a rainbow meaning one made by the filter on my lens.  and, out of 8 pictures, 6 of them had it!  yay!  this was in manual mode.  looks cool, huh?

then holly found one of those mushrooms that "smoke" when you step on it.  when i was a child, these were the coolest things.  she liked it too. 

next, we had to find some deer tracks.

kendal's gotten pretty good at picking them out - separate from the four-wheeler tracks!

he can even point with a stick.

check out how warm that glow is! and how long our shadows are!

no trip is complete without a little rockin' into the irrigation connect, which doubles as a microphone.

runway running

these pictures are a few weeks old, but they are worth posting none the less.  at the RDU observation deck, they have a little play area that includes a runway.  we had a lot of fun running on the runway pretending we were airplanes!

we also had fun playing on the observation deck and in the sand.

this is holly's daddy look: