Hi Folks, been kind of busy lately, but had a craving to do some photoshop, so did a little this morning. Now this isn't composed well at all for you beginners. I was so concentrated on getting a good view of the flower...I missed getting the supporting vase in the photo. The vase is directly below the flower...so instead I have what looks like a floating flower. Oh, well...at least I got some practice in...and learned a valuable lesson. BTW....I wish everyone a early Happy Valentines Day!

Sony HX300, shot at 4:3 aspect, processed with Elements 10 and Topaz Adjust

I was fortunate to capture these Yellow Jacketed Woodpeckers the other day nest building. They used to be a very rare sight in these parts but now it seems that they are on the upswing. I did a little reading and found that they like older, large, unkempt trees which they prefer for their nest building.

Now then, I have read several posts on UHH where the novice photographer tries to shoot birds while sitting in a tree and they can not seem to get the bird in focus for all of the branches.

This problem is either they were trying to photograph the bird with their lens in Auto Focus or, they are using a bridge camera that even in manual mode, does not allow for the manual focusing of the lens (such is the case here. I was using an old Fuji bridge camera). Since I was also shooting from indoors, my camera was actually focusing on the window glass. This is why everything is just a tad out of focus. Otherwise, the foreground branches would have been in focus.