Hey Sheree, I heard a while back that the garden was slated to be rennovated, but i was under the imression that it fell through. I am very happy to hear that the construction is partially complete and i look forward to visiting the new garden. Was David Slawson involved in the redesign, and if no, do you know whom? I am also very excited to have Mike Yamakami coming to Greenville, SC for a Japanese gardening workshop. If we could actually have it at the garden, it would be a real privilege and treat. If anyone is interested in attending the workshop, please follow this thread as more specific information regarding the date and time will be available soon. Greenville, SC is about an hour from Asheville, NC, about 1h 45m from Charlotte, NC, and a little over 2 hours from Atlanta, GA. Anyone with a sincere intereste in JGs is encouraged to attend. I have attended a number of Mr. Yamakami's workshops in the past, and have learned some very specific and valuable Japanese gardening information. In the past we have discussed and worked on things as varied as: Identification, cultivation, and propogation of bamboo Containing bamboo Harvesting and curing bamboo Tools for processing and building with bamboo Bamboo construction (fences, arbors, spouts, supports) Training pine trees with bamboo supports Pruning tools and techniques for trees and shrubs Creating specialized tools for unique circumstances Building a tripod ladder from hickory Creative use of ladders in difficult spaces using guy wires and bamboo supports Hardscape design and construction (pathways, stepping stones, boulders, fences) Stone selection and transportation On site stone movement using a tripod and chain hoist Aesthetic stone placement Site specific and design objective plant selection Japanese plant substitutions Containerized plant installation and care Transplanting large material Maintenance issues Pest management and chemical safety Tree climbing and safety Pond and water feature installations Site survey Materials estimation Scheduling and coordination of construction phases Design elements and functions in a Japanese garden Theory and symbology of garden design One of my transcriptions of a bamboo fence building workshop given by Mike Yamakami is still viewable at the JGarden website here: http://www.jgarden.org/features.asp?ID=75 I can also post an article from a stone setting workshop given by Mr. Yamakami if anyone is interested. -christian m.

In some of your photos, the camera has focused on a background feature instead of the main subject, for example, the brick wall and the woven fence. In these cases, you may have to resort to manual focus. The auto-focus technology is not perfect. It follows a set of its own rules and these do not cover all situations. In one case that I know about, the focusing routine (algorithm) looks for hard edges in the scene and adjust the lense to make these as sharp as possible. Thus, the focus routine fails if the central subject is fuzzy. It has difficulty in focusing on fuzzy thistle blossom, but may settle on the leaf edges seen in the near background. I have another brand of digital camera ( a much earlier example). This had excellent color renidition, but only 2 Megapixel. This one had a particular focuing rule: If it could not find a suitable edge to focus on, it racked the lens to infinity and led one to believe focus had been achieved. This was done to keep the focus mechanism from hunting when the camera was aimed at the sky and or clouds. Many of your macro shots are lovely, but then an occasional blossom is out of focus or poorly exposed, or does not have enough dynamic range to differentiate between the varying shades of white. Some of the blur may be due to motion of either the camera or the subject, but I did not detect the unidirectional smear typical of a wind blown blossom. There is a need to increase the depth of field for closeups of the blossoms. This is done by using a small arperature. For floral photography, you can shoot as slow as 1/30 sec with a tripod (highly recommended). Also, a larger len opening, say f/ 5.8, can be used to narrow the plane of focus. You have a Canon Powershot A630. I have the Canon Powershot S2 IS. There may be some similarity between these models. I was disapointed with mine until after I made a series of test shots. What I discovered was that the dynamic range of the sensor was not as large as I expected and the white to light colored objects were burning out in scenes with significant dark values. The default setting was overexposing a bit. This was corrected by reducing the exposure by 1/3 f-stop. (In my camera, this is not adjustable in the auto mode. Switch to the P (program) mode to make custom adjustments.) The default sensitivity is ASA 80. This results in slow shutter speeds for reduced light. This can be boosted to ASA 100 without much noise effect. In fact, the gain in shutter speed will more than offset any noise increase. With these adjustments, my shots were much improved. In a few cases when the result is too dark, it can be brightened with processing software. However, if a scene contains a burned out image, no amount of processing can save the picture.

I just wanted to let everyone know that the baby shower was today, and I brought my gift. I chose photo #3, just like the majority of you advised. Mostly because I didn't want the picture to take up too much wall space, I had it printed at 11x14" and framed it without a mat. The frame is like the silver one above, but white instead. When the mom unwrapped it, the first thing she said was, "It goes with the room!" Whew!! :-) They seemed to really like it. Thanks again for all your help! Susan

The Canon I mentioned above is a small point and shoot, optical zoom of 20x, does video and a little bit of fun stuff but it's primary purpose is to point and shoot. I'm not very good at taking pics, but my sister is, she has the same camera and it takes pictures as beautifully as the ones posted above. My point is, is that regardless of what "popular" brand you choose, if you go with a point and shoot that has optical zoom (as opposed to digital) and it's priced in the 200-300 range you're going to get a camera that will take some really stunning pictures. I think any differences in picture quality would be so subtle that really only a professional or hobbyist would be able to tell. And, while you've been given a lot of great information here, it is confusing or over whelming for those of us who aren't photography buffs. If you have a camera shop in the area, do what I did when I bought my DSLR, stop in to see what they recommend as a good option. They know their products, love talking about cameras, have the cameras there to show you for a visual and can answer questions. The camera shops often do repairs too and know which brands have problems and what the problems are. The one I went to even has a free class you can go to if you want to learn first hand about using all your new camera's options. My only regret is that I didn't go back and purchase that camera from him the way I should have. I made up for it though by purchasing my next camera there and sending my daughter there to buy their GoPro. :c)