its the freeken weeken baby... bounce bounce bounce

much like last week's post... pressures at work have been wearing on me. what can I say... ugh. I better get used to it, though, because my professional life won't simmer down till mid-May. The flip side of the coin is the pure bliss that the weekend brings. No worries, no timelines, no uber-multi-tasking, no use of the royal "we."

The pics below are pics from the weekend, part I. There are more, I just need to download & review them still. I should get a laptop, so that I can review my frames from somewhere other than my stinkin desk.

this is my friday night
an evening stroll along Alki is just about perfect anytime of year. wouldn't you agree? Just like everytime I go there, instead of glimmery pics of the sound, I was drawn to the light hitting this dandelion. At first tried to capture the whole scene...

buuuuuut, it was windy, and I couldn't get a fast enough shutter speed to capture the look I was after (note: the picture above is definitely not what I had envisioned). So, I took a different approach and came up with this frame:

I was captivated by the lights on the deck of siam pur, but ended up with some pretty wicked lens flare in each of my artfully composed shots. dang it! I also took a few inside the restaurant; this dessert, uh, menu caught my eye. I like the heart dotting the 'i'.

do you see what I see?

ok, now fast forward to Saturday... dma and I headed to a wildlife preserve along the banks of the Snohomish River. (p.s. hey, butcher... we missed ya! you sleepyhead!). It isn't as expansive as the Nisqually park, but dang, its close.... only 10 miles or so from Botheel. The trail wasn't too wet from Friday morning's showers, but there were some big 'ol raindrops on the blades of grass. I thought that was pretty cool to see.

oh dandelion

I was also captivated by the dandelions! it was probably the hearty pop of yellow against the green.

This first pic is taken in a style that a year ago I would have tried to work with...

Now, I don't mind "pruning" a bit to get a less cluttered frame ;)

The first two shots were taken with my 18-135mm, but I wasn't quite getting the look I was going for, so I switched to my bff the 50mm & fabulous glass close-up filter (seriously worth the $100, thanks Kenmore Camera dude for the advice!). Not too shabby for a portrait of a weed...

being the self-named and founding member of the macro superheroes, I coudn't resist cropping in using photoshop to get an even closer look. i like it (dma - reminds me a bit of your starburst shot...)

and there you go! The weekend, part one. I am headed up to A-town on Monday for "easter" with the fam, so it might be "awhile" till I post again.... hopefully I'll be able to get another round of cute pics of the little guy, though! Thanks for taking a peek at my pictures & I hope that you are having a lovely day!