Ok I will do some before after shots. I remind you , I love to push photography . It is another obsession I have besides gardening. I will work the details. But I am still learning my camera also. I hate to RTFM. TRoth garden taken in failing light at sunset After I addressed darkness, lightened the shadows, and burned the highlights, and the addressed the overall blue tones by adding yellow. A cactus group shot that had a beautiful beam of light. I like light and I am always photographing it and it is always making me tear my hair out. This one I found flat compared to what I saw. After punching lighter the exposure all over and darkening the exposure values , I elevated the definition to accentuate the contrast in the textures. de blued it and de-greened it I think. I did take liberties with this next picture of the Kalanchoe Luciae be cause I wanted the viewer to be surrounded and swallowed by the plant. I am not always driven by reality. Usually I am, but sometimes I gotta do a "Georgia". I felt that this one was washed out from how I felt it was. This one I did go a little overboard on it. So Sue me. Here is another one from the K. luciae series. The differences are sometimes not that starling, but subtle , but the overall will be worth it. Notice the highlights have an indistinct texture and I just want to make things better even though the picture is fairly alright. I just like to fiddle. Things just seem a little fuzzy. I feel air and I don't like it. I popped the exposure lighter then darkened the exposure value, burned the highlights. I want that rich sense of space amongst the leaves and the red to pop and show the light coming through them. I wanted the texture on the leaves. I am a little distressed with the out of focus on the back highlighted leaf. The highlight is still reading as blown.. I should have gotten my tripod out so I could cut the F stop down but then the sun would have been gone. I got the fuzzy out of there . the air is clear. I can breathe now . OH god, now you know I am obsessed. You know what is weird. I can do this for peoples portfolios and I do for some artist around all over. They send me full sized files and I see if I can work them.

HI Gottagarden! Wow. there is so much to say about your gardens. serously they are so stunning. I cant beelive that is the same garden in spring and now.. whoa. You are IMMENSELY talented at planning your beds- truly. I wish I had you here as a neighbor to help me! i cannever believe all the thigns you do. you must jsut be out there digging morngin noon and night every day. it's amazing you have tiem to write to us. LOL I have a couple of questions for you. First of all- i would LOVE to take some verbena seeds off your hands.I woudl love for them to go crazy here. i tried it one year and it never took?? I have plenty of cosmos brite lights seeds I can send you if you are interested. secondly- My butterfly bushes don't reseed either? But they are big and we got really heavy rains a couple of weeks ago and it bent some of the branches down to the ground... do you think it's an ok season to just cut those off and stick them in the ground? I was hoping to propagate it for my husband's grandfather this year. or shoudl I wait until spring to take a cutting to plant? ps- i found derelictgardener's post hilarious. haha. thaks for the laugh haha!

http://gallery.me.com/snehin#100072&bgcolor=black&view=grid

I made a short slide show in windows movie maker to show you what could be done. I put the 5 pictures in a folder, opened windows movie maker, clicked on 'add videos and photos', navigated to the folder and selected all of them and clicked 'Open'. They all uploaded to movie maker. I then clicked on 'Animations' tab and added a transition and saved the movie as demo. Here's a link to it so you can see if you want to use it. You will recognize the subject.