External Light Source for small subjects. Someone asked awhile ago about using separate light source in dark areas, like in the forest. So I went out into the woods and found these pine cones to photograph for an example.

This first shot is natural light in the forest that works fine, but you might have to increase your ISO a lot to get the proper exposure.

But for this photo below, I used an external light source because I wanted to bring out more of the detail on the pine cone. Which is much easier to do with directional light that I add to a subject. My source of light is a small flashlight. I always carry one with me just for this type of photo.

If my light is to bright for the subject I will put something in front of my flashlight like a piece of paper or plastic. What ever I have in my camera bag. There are all sorts of ways to change the softness of your light source.

I typically do not use the flash on my bridge camera, even though there are settings on it to make a softer light. It still tends to blow out the scene because the flash is mounted on top of the camera.

This is a fun way to change up your photos when taking shots of items in dark areas. Just remember to take a flash light with you on your outings.

This blue jay looks like he wants to hear what I have to say 🙂

External Light Source

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Spring Time Out Doors, lots of birds and more fishing for the husband this week. Nest are being built and the migration of birds is underway. I will have more new birds coming up the next couple of weeks.

My bird count has risen to 200 from 160.

Spring Time Out Doors

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

https://sandrajsphotographyfinearts.zenfoliosite.com/

Book a Photo Painting Here; https://sandrajsphotographyfinearts.zenfoliosite.com/book

Through the Forest of Trees

You can’t see the forest for the trees! It’s a widely known saying that is accepted by many as truth whether they are talking about issues in the workplace or about life in general. You-can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees means that we sometimes cannot see situations as they really are while we are in the midst of them.

The forest hold so many hidden gems. Tiny creatures to unusual leaves and trees.

I was walking past this tree that has all these gorgeous green leaves shinning in the morning light. So I stopped to take a photo as the green color was very eye catching.

I did not even see all these spots on the leaves until I looked at the photo later. They are not bugs, my guess is they are seeds for new life of some kind.

Through the Forest of Trees

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Color of Springtime is the morning light. Clouds at sunrise filter the suns light to a golden hue. A warm color after a long winter to warm our minds and spirits.

Have a Beautiful Weekend 🙂

Color of Springtime

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Sunset a time to Reflect, a wonderful way to end the month of March and start fresh for April showers that will bring May flowers.

Sunset a time to Reflect

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

https://sandrajsphotographyfinearts.zenfoliosite.com/

Book a Photo Painting Here; https://sandrajsphotographyfinearts.zenfoliosite.com/book

Spring Has Sprung in some parts of the world. Down south we had a couple of good rains with warmer temperatures and that is all it took for the wild flowers to emerge from the earth.

Purple being my favorite color is the first thing I saw this week with these dainty little flowers here. Don’t forget to print some of your own photos if you take them to hang on your walls to enjoy every day. I do, I change my photos in my frames every month.

Spring Has Sprung

New Pet Portraits, I have been busy creating some fun custom pet portraits the last couple of weeks and I always have to do a couple of my own cat and dogs as well.

My cat and her crazy eyes I like to call them. She is a tuff one to photograph because she usually doesn’t want to sit still.

This ones name is Kit Kit

This is Chloee

This one is my little dog Deohgee or DOG for short, remember her name is not the word dog, you say each letter and that is her name. 🙂 She is 15 years old this year.

This one is a dog called Good Boy Chevy from a You Tube channel that I know

This is a cute little dog named Max, with some bottom teeth that stick out like that all the time. But he is still cute.

This is a stray cat at the campground.

Well, these are not pets of course. But I made them for my web site under the wildlife category.

New Pet Portraits

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

William Bartram Trail, another park we stopped at not far from Savannah GA, a wonderful place to walk and see all the cool trees and some historical areas though out the forest. Old homestead grounds. We like visiting places like this. I enjoy reading all about the history of places now, never cared for it much back in school.

The trees are a piece of art even when they are blown over laying on the ground like this one.

William Bartram Trail

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Ocean Vessels

I like this first photo painting, it was pretty far away so I had to crop a lot of the photo out so you could see the ship closer. It looks like I am standing right in front of it. But there is a curve in the river and eventually it goes right by us.

This ship below I could not find much information about it except they call it a general cargo ship. It was coming up behind the container ship.

And this guy was behind all of them. Making head way as it caught up to the other two as we were leaving.

Ocean Vessels

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Lots of Containers, they make for a cool looking photo up close. That would make a great puzzle to put together.

We did a day trip to Tybee Island and on the way back I saw this container ship traveling back the way we came. So I checked the map and found a place we could drive right up to the waters edge and made it there just as the ship was about to pass by.

Lots of Containers

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Life on the Beach, things you will find on a beach. Sunrise on the Beach video below or Here; Sunrise on the Beach

Life on the Beach

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Light House Photography, Well we made it to Georgia and made our way to a place called Tybee Island where I photographed my first Light House. It was in a perfect location not far from the beach.

I definitely would like to find more of these to photograph. There is so much you can do with the photo, they make excellent paintings and look good as black and white as well.

Now I learned how to make the light flash on my photo, as I am writing this we will see if it works when it is posted. Oh, and now we have seen the Atlantic Ocean. 🙂

Light House Photography

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

The Horse of Course, the Paint Horse.  A horse of a breed that combines the conformational characteristics of a western stock horse with a pinto spotting pattern of white and dark coat colors.

My family raised pinto horses when I was young. We had a lot of them. I was given my very own horse at the age of 12. Let me tell you, those days with my very own horse were the best days of my young life.

I did not have time for shopping, boys or anything else really. It was just me and my horse riding the trails for hours on end. I guess that is where I get my love for the outdoors and animals as well.

Back in the day when the weekends would roll around, our mother gave me two choices. I either help clean the house or go shovel manure in the barn. I spent all day out in that barn. 🙂

The Horse of Course

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Kootenai Falls Swinging Bridge, now this is the one place I took a few photos as we visited this beautiful river. I have walked across a few swinging bridges, but nothing like this one.

I have to admit , I could not do it. I could not walk across this one. With the rushing water below and the movement of the bridge under my feet. My heart started racing right away. My head was spinning.

I have had vertigo in the past and I had a tumor taken out of my head that was pressing on the nerves that control ones balance. So nope, I could not walk more than a couple of feet and I went back.

It is quite the bridge, but I will have to stay on this side of the river on this one.

The bridge was originally created to help the forest service get across to fight fires. But now it is a tourist attraction and a good challenge for anyone like my self.

Well, this is all from our trip out west. When we left here we pretty much traveled straight home without a lot of sight seeing. It did take us 5 days to get home, but it sure was a trip to remember.

We drove over 8000 miles in 8 months, give or take. We were home for 4 months and are now on the road again. I just don’t want to shovel snow again. 🙂

Kootenai Falls Swinging Bridge

Sandra J

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Vehicle Chain Up Area, never a shortage of these signs out in the NW. Snow and ice on the mountain roads.

Which reminds me of a story when I was driving semi back in the day. I was actually driving in southern Montana and of course I ran into some bad weather as I was starting to go down a steep grade. I was already in a low gear and started to descend at a slow pace.

But a semi farther ahead of me was going slower and slower, his break lights finally came on. Luckily I was going slow enough as I was getting closer to him and the road was all ice.

He got on the CB, ( do they even have CB’s anymore?:), he called out he lost his gear and was having to down shift and start over. That is never a good thing on a steep grade with ice.

I was able to go around him and never did see in my mirror if he started moving again. I can only imagine he did.

I truly appreciate all the truck drivers out there. It is a hard job but it was fun as well. I am glad I did it for a couple of years. The strange thing about this entire experience for me is that my father was a truck driver. I had only met my dad once when I was about 5 years old and never saw him again. He had pulled up in front of our house in a semi. Funny that I always wanted to drive one and I got the chance to do it for awhile. 🙂

Here is the video for a previous post I did on that Historic Brookport bridge that goes across the Ohio River, It is over 5000 feet long and only 19 feet wide. I made a video of us crossing it. Link to Brookport Bridge Here;

Vehicle Chain Up Area

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Sandra J

Police Horse, another beautiful Belgian horse who’s name is Murphy I found out. There are a lot of pretty horses in this parade, but I take the photos as they are passing by and I choose the best ones to make a painting out of. I don’t usually post photos that have people in them.

But I like this one with the gentlemen on the ground with his hand over his heart as the flag goes by.

I sent this photo to the police department where they are stationed out of. They loved it and said thank you and that is where they told me the horses name is Murphy. Very fitting I think.

Sandra J’s Photography & Fine Arts

Police Horse

Sandra J

Navy Flying High, even the Navy is out training in these super fast planes. These guys go so fast, you can defiantly hear them before you see them.

This pretty plane just coming in for a landing.

I have never been in a plane this small, it looks kind of cramped in there.

I had an interesting job as a child that involved this air plane called an Air Tractor. My uncle flew a plane similar to this and I was the flag person for him. He would give me the coordinates of the field he was going to spray fertilizer on and I would have to hurry up and drive there before he got there.

Then I would have to just stand there as a marker for him, after he flew by I would have to step off the length of his air craft so he could use me as a marker on the next pass. He was quite the pilot.

Now they invented a flag that falls out of the end of the wing, so my job was eliminated. I sure enjoyed it back then.

Navy Flying High

Sandra J

Modern Marvels in Aircrafts, I have always been fascinated with aircraft, mostly helicopters. But all aircraft are modern marvels to me. The fact that something that large as an airplane or helicopter, that can fly and fly really fast is truly some engineering genius.

So when ever I see or hear aircraft, I grab my camera and hope I can get to where ever they are flying and take a few shots.

Just happened to be in the right place at the right time for these shots. Black Hawk helicopter doing a few flybys and training runs at a small air field we were near.

I took videos as well and I will share those when I get to them.

Have a great weekend.

Modern Marvels in Aircraft

Sandra J

 The Twin Barns at Nisqually, They were built in 1932 and used as dairy barns. Later, the tidelands that the farm had been built upon were returned to an estuarial state and became the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge in 1974.

The barns were used as an environmental education center, but were damaged in the 6.8 magnitude 2001 Nisqually Earthquake and have been closed since then. In December 2015, the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge was resdesignated the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge to honor the Nisqually Tribe Leader Billy Frank Jr.

These are probably two of the largest barns I have ever seen. I can just imagine how many bales of hay fit in the lofts of both of these.

The Twin Barns at Nisqually

Sandra J