Mom's Backyard

After a couple of visits to see my parents to celebrate both Mother's Day and Father's Day, I filled my camera with all kinds of pictures of bugs, flowers and trees from my Mom & Dad's backyard.  I've been playing around with them for a while now and I think it's time to unleash her garden on the World.  However, some homework needs to be done.  When it comes to flowers, my knowledge about them comes down to, "oh, that looks pretty."  Seeing as how I don't want to be the guy who describes his photos as being "this is a photograph of the red flower", some homework needs to be done.  That little bit of knowledge will be shared with me from the master herself, my Mom.  I did the right thing and took lots of notes on my most recent visit, but I wasn't as smart the first time around.  So, if you're reading this Mom, you'll be getting an email soon as I ask you for the names of a few flowers.  In the meantime, we'll share a little tree that was blooming in the garden and that I managed to capture along with it's reflection in the bird bath.  I'm a big fan of reflections and this picture was kind of an added bonus.  I only noticed it while I was sitting a few yards away in what would end up being my futile attempt to photograph some birds.  We've already read how that went.  I decided to get rid of the telephoto lens and grabbed my trusty zoom lens instead.  I kind of took this photo a little in reverse.  What I mean by that, is that you usually put the foreground of the photograph in focus while the background would be blurred.  I did the opposite here, choosing to put the tree in focus.  I chose to do this because the tree is the biggest part of the photograph.  Now that I think about it, I kind of wish I had done the reverse.  It might have been interesting to have the reflection in the bird bath be in focus while the green and red provided by Mother Nature would have made an interesting blurred background.  Something for me to keep in mind the next time I visit.  I shot this photograph at f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 68mm.  So, expect the blog to be going green for a little while as I we make our way through my Mom's garden.