For posterity's sake...

I am very much a beginner with photography. I like to learn new things, and frequently, I pick them up quickly. And sometimes, I have these moments of frustration in which I just can't seem to catch up to where I feel I should be.

I suppose everyone has these moments, right? And in the spirit of trying to learn, I'm going to share a couple recent photographic mistakes.

I took a day trip to visit some family who live out on the country on a gorgeous bit of land that they've only made more gorgeous with all their additions. I wanted to photograph their new barn and I thought it would be pretty to have the wildflowers swaying in the breeze in the foreground. I got that a little bit, but had trouble getting a slow enough shutter speed without over-exposing. And here is my "d'oh!" moment... I had a polarizing filter in my bag. It might have even prettied the sky a bit for me, and it most certainly would have darkened things a bit to let me slow down the shutter speed more. It's not a terrible image, but it could have been better if I hadn't been in such a hurry.

I found this amazing, HUGE, Indian Paintbrush in their fields. It was perfect and I decided to try a downwards shot on it. Wouldn't it have been perfect if I'd actually shot a few more frames to actually get the blasted thing dead-on and not slightly off? It was windy, but I should have realized that any angle that got me off from dead centered would reduce the impact. Maybe next year I can try again...