My Favourite Things: Monday

Happy Monday, dear reader! I hope that you had a wonderfully refreshing weekend or a fun-filled exhausting weekend... whichever your prefer! I had a delightful mix of both, which also involved spending some much needed attention on this here blog (as noted by the shiny new header!)

Today's category is your favourite photograph(s). Hopefully they're actually your photos or you may run into some minor copyright issues. And I'm pretty sure we're all looking to avoid that.

Even as an amateur photographer, there are still some photographs that I take that really make me happy. While I was in BC, my mother (who is an amazing photographer!) gave me some valuable pointers on improving my skills in terms of capturing landscapes, since that is my weakness.

My strength? Macro photography. I have a superb macro feature on my little point'n'shoot camera, and it makes me happy to be able to capture things as a limited scope of view. A snapshot of focused beauty...

Here are some of my favourite macro shots from our trip out west. Beautiful purple flowers, with some fantastic blurred texture as a backdrop.
It was a rainy day when I captured the last two photos. The sky was overcast and a mist had moved in and wrapped itself around the mountain tops. The light was perfect as it often is when it is overcast: bright enough to provide natural lighting without messing with shadows or sunspots.

I love how you can see water droplets on the dandelion. I also love how the flower is less than perfect... already losing its seed pods whether to wind or rain. I think sometimes it's the imperfection in nature that personifies its true beauty.
To me, this photograph shouldn't work since it's entirely green, but the water droplets offer enough interest to draw the eye with a little help from the forefront and background blurring. There's also some great texture here despite the green being monotone.
I don't profess to be an amazing photographer. If you saw how many truly awful photos I took before I captured ones as strong as the ones above, you'd realize that my eye is not consistent enough to be consider truly talented. And that's ok. I love fiddling, and as with the shots above, sometimes it's gratifying enough to be worth it.

What about you? What photographs have you taken that make you happy? I'd love to see them!