April Showers

It seems like it rains a lot these days. On Tuesday afternoon (after a very rainy Monday), I took Kellen and Ammy to Sherwood Gardens. Sherwood Gardens is the most famous tulip garden in North America (according to their website) and I used to take my older three kids when they were younger. The kids can run around the 6-acre property, climb trees and see all the varities of tulips.

They also have dogwoods, flowering cherries, wisteria and magnolias in the garden.

Now to be honest with you, the real reason I took them to Sherwood Gardens was so that I could practice using my camera. I have a great camera and I take tons (hundreds at a time) of pictures. As a result, I usually end up with a lot of great shots. I have been working on a project where I have been photographing textiles for a book and decided that I needed to figure out how I am getting the good shots (and what I am doing wrong when I get the bad shots). I bought Photographing Children, Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent by Ginny Felch and Allison Tyler Jones. While this book won't help me shoot textiles, I figure I take many pictures of children and this was a good start for learning the ins and outs of my camera.

The topic for the day was Depth of Field and Selective Focus. The assignment for the day was to try to get a beautiful photo with selective focus (meaning that the subject is sharp and all else is out of focus) I used the portrait mode on my camera and I ventured out and used Aperture Priority. Here are some of the photos I liked...

These last two photos are just proof that they actually had fun at Sherwood Gardens.