Beautiful Sunday

Happy Mother's Day, all!

A wonderful day was spent today in the company of my Mom, her friend and my sister. We went to a brunch that was held at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. The food was tasty and the price of admission included a live performance by Esteban.
For those of you not familiar with him, he plays a Spanish gypsy flamenco-style guitar and his technique is self-taught. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I would certainly pay to attend one of his shows again. Oh, and I met my new grand-daughter today too. Her name is Buffy and she's a Boston Terrier. She's black and white and full of it! And, she's got a crazy pair of ears. Babe the Pug was quite fond of her.

Two shots from today.

Esteban:



And, introducing Buffy, approximately 14 weeks old:

Better Luck Next Time

My friend got a new kitty yesterday. I was hoping to show up with my camera and snap the first pictures of it, but the cat had other ideas. It was probably just bad timing on my part. A new cat in a strange environment plus two kids and a pug = cat hiding under bed. What was I thinking? Anyway, I moved on to the next unwilling candidate and was able to bribe a couple shots out of him with the promise of a shiny, new matchbox car the next time I saw him.

These were taken with my 105mm Micro. (This seems to be my lens of choice lately)

ISO 400/ 4.5

Through The Tulips

The first two images were taken with natural window light and the third image was taken with available light from incandescent bulbs above.

After many failed tries and a broken vase, I produced a handful of images that I am happy with. I really liked the shallow depth of field of one and two. It's a shame that the life span of these beauties is not very long.