Hearst Castle: Travel Photography

While in Cambria we visited Hearst Castle. The grounds had beautiful flowers and gardens, all of which will be great inspiration.

Cambria Pines Nursery: Garden Photography

Even the Cambria Pines Nursery is too darn cute not to take more garden photos at. They have adorable displays within the nursery and amazing flower beds around the perimeter. We were only here for about 15 minutes, so I had to be quick with my snapshots. I decided to stay away from my usual macro type shots, as those require time and patience without a tripod to ensure you get crisp photos.

I'm definitely making the birdbath display in my future garden!

Cambria Pines Lodge: Garden Photography

In addition to taking macro photos in the Cambria Pines Lodge gardens with my medium camera, I also took more compostie photos of the gardens. I worked to include diagonal and curving lines, pattern and not trying to include everything in the shot. I did take some landscape photos to capture an entire garden section, but with stark light and shadow areas they need some touch up in Photoshop. 

I love these gardens - I definitely want to go back and spend more time taking photos here.

Macro Monday: Cambria Pines Lodge Flowers

I recently stayed at the Cambria Pines Lodge and they have an assortment of beautiful, tucked away gardens. I spent a bit of time with my medium camera going around taking photos only to find out that the dials had been moved and all the photos were blown out. It was such a bright day that I had thought I just couldn't see the screen properly. Note to self - always check the setting before starting a photo shoot!

After properly adjusting the camera settings, I went around with lightning speed to try to capture some photos worth keeping. These are a few of the macro photos I took. I did not have a tripod on me, so I took many more photos than were in crisp focus.

Learning to Watercolor

I'm officially going to teach myself how to watercolor - hooray! I've been wanting to do this for a number of years, but I'm finally putting a plan into motion. I've ordered a set of Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor brushes and plan to follow the projects in Heather Smith Jones' Water Paper Paint book. Usually art books spend an extra long amount of time working on the tedious details, but Heather's book delves right into fun projects. I've got paper and some watercolor paints that have been given to me, so it's almost time to start. I can't wait!

Rose Illustration

Over the past few weeks, I've been taking a beginning drawing class at the local community center - basically, it has been boring and tedious. Tonight I thought I would draw something fun and went with the rose from my previous post. The illustration is not yet complete (it needs much more shading), but this took me forever as it was. It's definitely no replica of the photo, but it's probably my best drawing (considering I do not draw).