Sunday Stills Challenge - In The Sky

This week's Sunday Stills Challenge was In The Sky: planes, clouds, birds or anything you can come up with.

The Boyfriend is rather obsessed with his hummingbird feeder and they have really come out like crazy this year for it so I couldn't wait to see if I could catch them with my camera.

Happy Sunday to you all, hope you had a great weekend!

SSC ~ Rust!

I wouldn't be my mother's daughter if I didn't do this Sunday Stills Challenge!

First we have a rusty old horse shoe from a few different angles.

And the Boyfriend's rusty old Ford

All pics are SOOC, no editing done.

I can't believe I haven't blogged since January 3rd. Bad Blogger! I'm hoping to start blogging again soon. I have so much to write about!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Halloween

Wow, it's been a loooooong time since I did a Sunday Stills Challenge! Way too long!

I've got a bit of Halloween paraphernalia around my house and I was finally able to take a little time with my camera to get some pics of it for this challenge. Mostly just because I was procrastinating doing other things.

BOO!

These last ones are some candle holders that I have.

Happy Halloween!

To see more Halloween pics go through the comments here.

Sunday Stills Challenge - Moods and Emotions

Well howdy strangers! Long time no see! I have a confession to make...I haven't even picked up my camera in months. Months! I'm not sure exactly why, but I didn't even realize how long it had been since I really took some pictures until I picked up my camera Friday night with this SSC in mind. It felt weird in my hand and that made me very sad.

But I'm back! And hoping it's a regularly back thang, not hit and miss. I really want to challenge myself to take better pictures and learn more about my camera this year.

On to the Sunday Stills Challenge this week, which is Moods and Emotions. "This challenge is for you to get a shot that enables a response in the person who views your pic not one that is your personal emotion. For example if I see a pic of a tranqual stream or a sunrise I feel mellow, If I see a pic of a doggie smiles or a horse doing his rolling in dirt thing It makes me smile, you get the idea."

This is definitely a challenge, but I know my pets always evoke some sort of emotion in me (good and bad, lol) and May Belle (aka: Chunk, Fatty, Tubby, Chubs...she's a little....um...rotund) was a happy and willing subject for me. Each of these pictures makes me feel a little different, what do they do for you?

Chunk stretching out of her little ball to glare at me and the camera.

Chunk on her back. You might think she's all sprawled out sleeping, but no...the dog is on the ground just out of the frame and she's teasing her.

Bath time!

*YAWN*

And here we have poor, pathetic Cheyanne cuddling with her substitute kitty, the hedgehog, because the kitties are playing outside and she is stuck in the house. If that doesn't make you stick out your lower lip and feel bad for her, I don't know what will. :-)

That's all for this week! Hope to see you all again next week!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Halloween

This weeks SSC was anything having to do with Halloween so I've decided to showcase my mad pumpkin carvin' skillz. And the fact that I'm a 28 year old Twitard. Ya...



So I had some girlfriends over for the Great Pumpkin Carving Adventure 2009 a couple weeks ago and this is what we came up with.

All very cute and all totally different. Love it! Can you guess which one is mine?

Yep, I'm the twitard, complete with vampire fangy smile and all. In my defense, there was alcohol involved, but probably not enough to make this acceptable. I also may have been breaking in my Edward/Jacob tshirt that night, but there are no pictures to prove it.

So here I go, outing myself to the world with my Twitard pumpkin sitting on my porch. Only you can't see my porch from the road, so no one knows. Except you. And all the good people that read Twitarded, because I apparently made JJ and STY's day when I sent it to them so they posted it there as well. Eeks!

All righty then. I think that's enough embarrassing myself for one evening. Hope you all had a happy Halloween! And we're into the teens for the countdown to New Moon! YEEHAW!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Landscapes and Fall Foliage

I love fall! I love watching trees turn and seeing all the colors. It's my favorite time of year. Other then the frosty mornings. I'm really not ready for frost and cold again. It seems like we were just here.

Regardless, the colors are beautiful. Unfortunately, the weather and my schedule did not cooperate this week at all. It has been cloudy and gray all week so that combined with the 20 seconds of daylight I have when I get home from work, getting pics for this challenge just wasn't looking promising. Then yesterday I got lucky! It was still cloudy and foggy most of the morning, but when I came home from running some errands I noticed the mountain was peeking out just enough and the sun was shining on this lone little maple tree at the bottom of our property. Of course the tree is somewhat past it's color turning glory, but I think it's still pretty.

Happy fall!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Photoshop

This weeks challenge is Photoshop. Play with the settings and make something interesting. Well, I pretty much suck at editing pictures. I'm not exactly known for my soft touch and the term subtle is not in my vocabulary. I'm not sure how interesting these pics turned out, but they are definately edited!

I took these pics last week for the challenge, Happiness, but didn't get a chance to get them loaded and posted. I figured they'd work just dandy for this weeks challenge. As my sister says, happiness is a hairball. These are my most favoritist hairballs, the ponies. They definately make me happy.

This in particular is the best...getting snarfed by Midori when I go to visit. She just can't stay out of my face when I'm out there. Not even long enough for me to snap a decent pic of her.

And this is the edited version. I played around with these in Picnik, trying out different filters and adjustments. I believe this one was "Night Vision".

Even when the ponies are crabby at me for interrupting their naps, they still make me happy. Somehow I get a lot of crabby pics of Mister, but he is just a big teddy bear.

I believe I cranked up the contrast, lowered the saturation and used a HD filter on this one.

And then there's Sugar Pop. She loves posing for me.

And picnik had all these fun Halloween tools so I made Sug a vampy pony. Somehow it just fit with her better then the others.

Hope you are all having a fabulous weekend! Don't forget to click on the G.A.G. pic at the top of the sidebar and enter the Great Anniversary Giveaway!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Signs of Fall

Well, due to some technical difficulties, I'm getting this up a little late. Darn computers! Here are some signs of fall from my neck of the woods...

First off, we have all of my pots and hanging baskets drying out, turning brown, dying...

Though that may have more to do with me being in "fall mode" which does not include watering plants. Oops!

Our ponies are all shedding their nice, short summer coats and getting a little fuzzier...

They are also getting very hair chinny chin chins. Atleast before they got clipped for the show this weekend!

And is it just me or is there really way more of these guys hanging around in the fall time? They seem to be every where! Ick!

The leaves are starting to change...

And a sure sign of fall at my house is mushrooms. There were a bunch that popped up when we had a week or two of cooler, cloudy weather, but of course the last week has been sunny and hot so they all disappeared, except for these little guy. We really do get quite the variety of mushrooms all around our house in the fall though.

Happy fall to everyone!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Rule of Thirds

Well, I hope I'm getting this right. I love the rule of thirds when taking pictures and thought I had about a million pictures that I could use for this challenge in my archives (I had a super busy week this week so I didn't have time to get any new pictures). Of course once I started looking thru my archives I realized that I really do still center most of my pictures. I was a little disappointed in myself. ;)

I did find a few that I think qualify.

I have always loved this picture. It is jrosey and my bff Sarah trail riding down by the river on a beautiful fall day.

This is another one of my faves of the boyfriend. He was taking a walk while they were dragging the arena at a cutting show.

And a snowy branch draping over our hitching post last winter. I think I was trying for the rule of thirds here, but it's kind of right in between being centered and thirds. The snow is mostly in the top third and the vertical post is mostly in the left third. Mostly. I suppose I could have cropped a bit, but I like it just the way it is.

And then we have the ominous cloud picture with the ground and trees in the bottom third. Or bottom quarter. Close enough.



To check out more Rule of Thirds pics go thru the comments here.