Photo 130 - 365 Moores Creek Trees

I don't know if I've mentioned this but I grew up in West Texas, where the native tree is the Mesquite and it doesn't grow very tall. I have a thing for trees now. I love trees. My daughter paints trees and I just want to keep all of her artwork because I love trees in art. We visited Moores Creek Battlefield a couple of months ago and I took this photo looking from the boardwalk towards the bridge. Beautiful Country.

Photo 129 - 365 Rainbow

We are finally getting some good rain. We've had a couple of drought seasons and this summer we've had a lot of rain and storms. My daughter saw this one evening and we all ran outside to check it out! It was beautiful!  

Photo 128 - 365 Mega Moth

This was on our back patio door last Saturday. It is one of the biggest moths I've ever seen!  I took a few photos with normal setting but couldn't get the color right and got a lot of reflection from the glass of the door. I tried the dynamic setting (my fav) and got this photo. I know you can't really see how big this moth is but I'll tell you it had a wingspan of 6 inches! Just huge! It stayed there most of the day. In the afternoon it had its wing up instead of flat out. I think it was trying to get some of the breeze because it was a hot day.  It was really neat being able to see it from this side.

Photo 127 - 365 Fireworks

It is always fun to take long exposure photos and today is a great excuse to photograph fireworks. 

HAPPY JULY 4TH EVERYONE!!

Photo 126 - 365 Battleship

Drove to Wilmington NC to visit the USS North Carolina this weekend with my family. My brother and his family came for a visit. It was so great to see them! I took this photo from the upper decks on the Battleship. I got to use my wide angle lens for the visit. So fun!!!  Don't worry I have more photos to share!

Shackleford Ponies and Cape Lookout

Had the opportunity to go out to Shackleford Banks this weekend. We were able to get pretty close to a couple of ponies while we were on the island and we saw this group in the water on our way back. This is part of a group of 6 (if I remember correctly). We first saw the group on our way out to the island. They were on another small island eating the grass and just hanging out. Our ferry Captain was very accommodating and got us up close enough to photograph the ponies as they were headed back to the big island. You can see Cape Lookout in the background on the right. These are beautiful wild ponies that live on this island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. You can read more about them here. (http://www.shacklefordhorses.org/)

Sorry the photo is so small... If I make it larger, you won't be able to see the lighthouse. I'll post more photos of the horses soon.

Photo 124 - 365 Artful Rose

Playing with the ART settings on my camera again. This is the Dynamic setting. This rose was part of my Administrative Professionals Day flowers that were given to me by my co-workers. As the Roses started to wilt, I photographed a few.  Again, just playing with the settings.