Beautiful contrast between the sharp color of the fruit and the soft background.

I have the 18-270 that I use on my T1i. It has excellent stabilization and I can hand hold the full 415 mm equivalent. It is a little soft at the top, but very good at the wide end. I think you will enjoy it.

Beautiful. That technique is perfect for the setting.

In my flower work, I often encounter that old enemy, wind. I frequently shot in manual and select the aperture based on depth of field and the shutter speed based on flower movement. In that case, I use auto ISO and let it run up as high as necessary. I am amazed how good modern digital cameras are at high ISO. Even so, I seldom get about 3200.

I am a big fan of daylilies and photograph them often. You are inspiring me to give Asiatic lilies a try! Beautiful shots.

Thanks, Carol. I am certainly open to any suggestions from my fellow flower photographers!

This is the time of year all fans of the daylily wait for. These are from my garden.

Classic orange flower with more to follow


Spider daylilies


Magenta with ruffled petals

Welcome from a former Mobile resident now in North Carolina!

Absolutely beautiful. Just be sure it sticks to the tree, though. I had one tear up a wooden window frame and some siding on the house.

Almost neighbors! I work in Greensboro at the hospice. When I was medical director of the Cancer Center at Moses Cone I would get up to Eden frequently to the Smith-McMichael cancer center there.

Welcome to the forum. I am in Asheboro. Where are you located?

Hi Greg – I do this for fun as well. When I moved up from a T1i, I went with another crop sensor, the 70D. I love this camera. My decision to stay with a crop frame rather than go to a 5D Mark III was cost. I invested in Canon L lenses rather than in the camera body. The major factors favoring the full frame camera over the 70D are more rugged professional construction, better weatherproofing, the ability to make very large prints, and the ability to do more extreme cropping. I am 72 years old and don’t need the outdoor weatherproofing as I once did and I am not usually printing large images. The 70D is fine up to 16x20 and can go larger if there isn’t much cropping involved. It really all depends on your budget for the body versus the lenses and what kind of photography you are doing - John

You are confusing the Bible with science/history. They have no connection whatsoever. For example, anyone who knows literature knows that the story of Noah and the Ark is derived from the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in Ur around 2500 BCE and adapted by the Jewish people during the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE. The point of the story is that God lets rain (bad times) fall on the good and the bad alike and that Divine justice and reward is deferred beyond this life, so we shouldn’t worry about the seeming unfairness we see around us. The story is a classic myth and only what it teaches about our relationship with God and each other is important. One does not have to believe in the historical facts of the story. If you try to see this as more than a myth, you will quickly lose interest in the Bible.

If you upload photographs to Costco and order prints, you have to certify that these are your photographs and not someone else's. Obviously, that just requires a click of the mouse but it does show you that large chains are concerned with potential Copyright violations and want to transfer responsibility for any violation to the person attempting to print the pictures.

I lived there for 28 years. Take Dauphin Island Parkway to the mouth of Dog River. Very colorful with great boats of all kinds, marinas, and sea birds galore. You can find many spots for good photography. If you go down there, ask for directions to the Mariner Marina and restaurant. You can eat the best seafood you will ever have on the deck at sunset and photograph to your heart's content. The Eastern Shore is nice, but very built up now.