Road Trip to the West: The Great Sand Dunes

Along our road trip we made many amazing stops! One of our stops was to see the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. They were incredible!!! They are located in the San Luis Valley between two mountain ranges: the San Juan Mountains and the Sangre de Cristos. Because of their location they are a part of a very unique ecosystem. We had so much fun learning more about this area. You can check out more information about how these dunes were formed at their National Park page here: http://www.nps.gov/grsa/naturescience/sanddunes.htm

San Juan Mountains

The Sangre de Cristos

Rock the Shot: Favorite Shot of 2012

I LOVE macro photography! My passion for photography started when I discovered on my film camera that my lens had a little switch that let me "zoom in really close." I bought magnifiers and tried to figure out how to get even closer. That was years ago and I have learned so much since then. This past year I purchased a 105mm 2.8 Nikon Macro Lens and have fallen in love. 

I was photographing a fun little frog in my garden the day I took this picture and then decided to do a walk through of my yard. I found this spider web with the most amazing water droplets! I took quite a few pictures that you can find here, but there was just something about this one. I love the way the water looks like it is floating through the air. I am so proud of this picture!

Don't forget to check out the other amazing entries at www.rocktheshotforum.com!

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Natural Beauty: A Frosty SC Morning

Mornings are not my best time of day. It is such a struggle for me to wake up, especially if it is extra chilly out! Today, however, I had a break through…. give me something fun to photograph and I am wide awake!  I saw another photographer post some amazing frosty photos and wanted to try it out too! I have found that you never know what the weather is going to be like here in South Carolina, so when I heard a cool frosty morning was on its way I literally jumped out of bed at my chance. :)

I'm glad I did! Enjoy the frosty fun!

Frosty Kale in the garden! 

 Melting Frost

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Connecticut Visit: Part 1

       Connecticut was beautiful! I had such an amazing time visiting with my sister and seeing super colorful fall leaves. It had been too long, 6 years to be exact, since I'd seen the beautiful reds and oranges! I think I must have said, "look at how beautiful they are" at least 100 times. 

     These photos are from our first little outing. I opened up google maps and looked around to see what parks were close to the area where my sister lived and off we went. Here are some of my favorites from our little adventure!

This path just looked so magical to me!

Yes! Those are bugs!!!

Natural Beauty: The Hungry Caterpillars

The end of the summer brought all kinds of different critters to the garden. The caterpillars came in full force. A different kind attacked the tomato plants. But this caterpillar, the Black Swallowtail, LOVED parsley. These are what they looked like when they first arrived. They were all over the parsley and as they grew, the parsley disappeared. I'm sad that all of my delicious parsley is gone, but I loved watching these caterpillars grow over the 10 days they were here!

 A couple of days later

 5 days later