I almost backed out of the blog circle this week.  It's been pretty hectic getting client orders together, our weather system not only dumped tremendous amounts of rain our way, but also brought heavily damaged and flooded areas in our local communities, and I wasn't sure I would be able to put any time in getting photos for the week.

However, I got lucky, deciding to take my camera along for an early evening walk with Billie to a local park on a changeable sky type of day.

I think shadows are important in photography.  They help tell the story.  Sometimes photographers try to get rid of shadows in their photos.  There are many editing tools to "bring out" (as in eliminate, or lessen) shadows, and there are times when they are helpful and necessary.  But not every time.

On this particular evening, we were going from a rather cloudy day to the sun finally trying to make an appearance.  I knew that this park would give me some great areas to find the shadows I was looking for in terms of this particular set of photos.

There is a boardwalk path into the woods in the park.  You can see the dark and shadows off to the left, moving to the brightening area to the right.  I used no flash and tried to get my camera settings as close to the light situation as possible, as I wanted the photo to be a true reading of the light.  This is the result.  It is a true photo with no light enhancements.  The shadows tell you the story of the woods here.  Billie is watching for chipmunks.  They are very plentiful under this boardwalk!

Here is a close up of the same scene.

In this photo I enhanced the light a bit in editing, but you can still see  the shadows telling you the story of the wooded area on the left and the brightness of the lake area on the right.  If I were doing anything with this photo other than using it as a blog example, I might edit out the tree growing out of Billie's head.  On this particular path, it's very hard NOT to get a tree growing out of a body part.

You can certainly see the difference in the story from this second photo to the the first photo.  Which do you prefer?

Finally, on my way out of the park, I met two very nice young people with a Golden Retriever puppy named Cooper.  I asked them if I could snap a photo of Cooper, and they agreed and set him up in a spot that I thought would give another example of using shadows to your advantage in photography.

By placing Cooper more in the sunlight and using the shadows in the background as a backdrop, Cooper stands out more in the photo.  You can see that I made sure that the sunlight hit his lower body and not his face.  You can also see the long shadows of the evening all around him.  This particular evening turned out to be a beautiful night, thankfully after all the rain we have been having.  Cooper is still wet from his swim in the lake in this photo.

To see more shadows and more interpretations of this week's theme, start with SamAdele Pet &Equine Photography covering the Lancaster, Morecambe and Heysham areas, United Kingdom.  Then look for the links at the end of each blog to continue through the circle until you arrive back here again.  Happy weekend!

As I sat down to write this week's blog, the skies opened up with torrential downpours and loud thunder.  This is not a new thing here in Northeast PA.  EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. THIS. HAPPENS.

It's significant for me today because I had planned on taking one of our dogs over to the park to sit on a dock while I shot what I thought might be one of our great sunsets.  Nope.  Silly me.

So instead let me tell you about the three ways I use "Sky."

 Sometimes I get lucky and just use SKY as is.  That was the case here, chem trails and all.  This photo is quite a number of years old, taken with a Sony point-and-shoot.  I have done little to it, except to bring out the horse in the front a little more and add some lavender tones to the sky.  In this case I used the existing sky to enhance the look and feel of the photo.  Two horses high on a hill above the barns where you can even see the cloud patterns on the hills that surround them. Without this lovely sky, this would be quite a different photo.

Photographers will tell you we are not always so lucky.  We try to pick the best days and best times to take photos, but Mother Nature tends to have her own plan.  Just like today and the rain coming down in buckets around me.

I combat Mother Nature's plan A, by using my plan B.  Whenever I am somewhere where the sky is great and there is a nice scene, I take a photo of it.  Then I use my own photo as the launching off point or background to create a composite.  The dog (Tinker - which must mean stick chaser in some language) was in a different photo on a dreary day, so I dropped him into my backdrop.  I must admit, "dropped" makes it all seem easier than it is, but with loads of practice under my belt, I am much more confident about this type of SKY activity.

And finally, I use a sky overlay as an option in some of my photography work.

I really never want the sky to overwhelm or outshine my subjects, so in this case, I used a subdued version of an overlay.  Overlays are relatively easy to use so long as you don't have too many little intricate spots you need to work the sky into, like a mane and forelock....LOL.  Ah well, it all worked out, didn't it?  In this case the sky was not blue or even white....it was gray.  The overlay gave this photo an entirely new life and look and brightened it extensively.

Always be aware of your SKY and how you can use it to an advantage to enhance your photography.

For more peeks of SKY, the blog circle is ready and waiting.  This week start with Dog Photography by Browning Photo, serving Columbus Ohio pets and their families.  I am sure Lisa has something great in store for us.

Hopefully your weekend skies will be blue, with no rain in sight!

When I still didn't have a CLUE what I was going to do for this week's theme, I happened to see a Nat Geo program on orangutans when I was visiting insomnia land.  Beautiful creatures, their gangly bodies and facial expressions are almost comical.  That led me to thinking about other animals that could be nature's comic relief, like the ostrich, penguin, sloth, etc.

Then I completely lucked out and met a pair of fainting goats.
                               F.A.I.N.T.I.N.G.
If you have not heard of fainting goats, here is a YouTube video that explains what they are all about.

The two I met were well rounded, exposed to everything, just-go-ahead-and-try-to-scare-me, goats named Boomer and Indigo.  Fainting goats don't actually faint or lose consciousness at all during these episodes. Due to a congenital medical condition (myotonia congenita), the goat's muscles tense up when they are startled or excited.

Boomer and Indigo are VEEERRRRYYY attached to their Mom.  So much so, they do not really need to be leashed, as they follow her around.  When I met them they were in the midst of barking dogs, and people they didn't know and it did not phase them one bit.  In fact, nothing really startled them.  Well, except one little incident when they were crossing over a foot bridge and Boomer picked just that moment to fall over stiff-legged and, yep, off the bridge into the water.  He had a cast of thousands there to rescue him, however.  He crossed the bridge after that just fine and happily munched nature's goodies on the other side.

When I met them I immediately knew that goat facial expressions were meant to make us smile.  Goats, I think, are natural comics.

This is Boomer.  He has a load of great facial expressions and ears to match.

Boomer was not at all shy about the camera.  In fact, he tried to taste it once.  Such a friendly, well-adjusted guy.  A true testament to his Mom.

Then there is Indigo.  A little more subdued and named for blue eyes, Indigo wasn't as curious about my camera, and didn't have as many facial expressions as Boomer, but definitely stood very still for photos.

Um...maybe too still.  I could have taken a boat load of this stance.  Maybe Indigo was mesmerized? Or had fainted standing up?  I am not sure.  But I do know that I sure wish we had some fainting goats  on this farm.  (When my husband reads this he is going to look at me and say....."NO GOATS."  But that's what he said to chickens years ago and we have eight.)  HA!

I am sure we need to move along to the blog circle and more "Comic" interpretations.  This is a wide open theme, and I can't wait to see how others decided to attack it!  This week we are starting with Darlene of Pant The Town Pet Photography, serving Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  Smile, enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Whenever this topic comes up it reminds me of the song lyrics "I say potato and you say pototo, I say tomato and you say tomoto."  Whether you pronounce it like a bunch of flowers or "boke-uh" it is used to describe the quality of the blurry parts of a photo.

Bokeh is rendered by the lens, not the camera. Different lenses render bokeh differently due to their design.  Some lenses do a better job at it than others.

Purely by chance this week, I grabbed a shot of one of our hens standing on her favorite rock overlooking the horse paddocks.  It was late in the day, and it gets dark under the trees where she is located, but light still filters from the trees off in the distance.  At the point where I knelt to take this photo, our coop motion light came on and illuminated Amelia in the darkness of the tree cover.  You will notice the bokeh more to her right because there is still reflected light in that area.

I took this photo of Barney on a more overcast day as he was hiding under a lawn chair while pretending he was one of the dogs.  He loves to play with our dogs in the yard and acts just like one of them.  While not as bright and reflective, you can still see a nice bokeh over his head and to the left as bits of light are reflected back to the lens.

There are certainly some good points technically that you can apply to capture bokeh.  Since bokeh is influenced by how close the subject is to your lens and/or how far the subject is from the background, experimenting with different lenses is the only way to know what type of bokeh you can achieve.

My final image is of happy Danny.  Here I have embellished whatever bokeh was in the photo with some manufactured (brushed on) bokeh and light reflections.

Join me in exploring what others in the blog circle have done with the bokeh theme this week.  Start with Kathie Ono of Ono Pet Photography in Fairhope, Alabama.  Check for the link at the end of each blog.  There are quite a few of us in this week's circle, which means more fun, and more great photos to see!  Have a wonderful weekend!