Weekly Photography Challenge

This week I got to see a porcupine in the wild. I was working on building a new chicken pen when I looked up and saw a porcupine sitting up in a tree eating. I quickly ran into the house and grabbed my camera. The porcupine was unfortunately high up and backlit for photography but I still managed to make some nice shots. It then got upset about me and David watching it and climbed down the tree and headed off into the woods. I also spent some time photographing a whole pile of hummingbirds at a feeder. I saw twelve at one time. I had so much fun that I set up feeders at home to try and get some more, and better, photographs of hummingbirds. 

This week I photographed Deonne and Fred's wedding. It was a nice small informal wedding and was loads of fun. Unfortunately the ceremony was right around midday and the sun was shinning brightly from high in the sky. I managed to get by with heavy use of my flash and fill light. The ceremony was short and sweet and then I made some group photographs and everyone relaxed into socializing for the afternoon. I really like the group photograph I made above because I managed to get a good balance between my flash and and sunny background and the ugly hazy white sky was mostly removed from the photograph. There were some young children and they made for some great moments like the one below of the little girl looking up at Deonne through the flowers. It was also really neat because a pair of huge white Trumpeter Swans visited the nearby pond and I was able to get fairly close and photograph them. They are so HUGE standing on land they were almost as tall as me. 

This week I helped at the new victus farm, sustainable fish plant, hauling cement from the truck to build the water troughs. I was also charged with documenting the progress through photographs. While doing this I made this photograph above which I love because of how both Mike and the cement truck are framed perfectly in the door. However I was using my flash as fill light due to the contrasty midday sun and it didn't fire and I wished that Mike wasn't facing directly away from the camera and mostly hiding the water sprayer. So I quickly made another photograph but unfortunately he had moved just slightly which totally ruined the framing. I still like the one above more even with Mike facing so exactly away from camera.  I also played the most epic game of Settlers of Catan and photographed the ending board to record its spectacularness. For fellow players there were exactly 2 places left to build settlements and they were only accessible by one person, no development