Pictures of Trees

In my post on my accomplishments of the last 15 months, I listed that I joined a women's photography group to honor James by taking on something that was of interest to him. I inherited a great digital camera from him and I intend to learn how to use it. My goal is to some day be able to enter a prize winning photo into the county fair. It may not sound like much, but I am a small town girl at heart and the fair is a big deal in small towns.

In March, I went to my first meeting and quickly discovered I was in over my head when the other women started talking about things like "aperture" and "shutter speed." I have no idea what aperture means and I didn't realize that you can change the shutter speed or that you would even want to do that. I can turn on the camera and take pictures that sometimes turn out. (I could read the little book that came with the camera, but where's the fun in that?) Not to be deterred, I signed up for yesterday's photo walk at Hoyt Arboretum. It was a beautiful day and it was nice to be outside in the fresh air. The Arboretum was very peaceful, but unfortunately, most of the blooms had already dropped from the trees and I found I could only take so many pictures (145 it turns out) of trees before I started to get bored.

Of the 145 I took, I really liked the following four. And I did learn something: when it is light out, you are supposed to lower the ISO. No clue what that means, but it's still good to know.