July 4th. Congrats to the USA for another year! We have so much to be grateful for. I could dive into reasons to celebrate. But I won't. Suffice to say, "Wow, what a great place to live!"

No pictures are displayed here. Instead, I created a garden photo-slideshow with music. After shooting about a 100 exposures today, I selected a few to share. No...no...the slideshow does not contain 100 shots...Yikes...even I would turn me off. The show runs about 3-4 minutes with 20 or so pictures. Hopefully you will think it zips right along.

To see it, click here. Then click on the blue "watch" button.

This month's Star Performer goes to a low growing Clemitis integrifolia 'Hanajima'.

Isn't that a mouthful! Sounds like one of those wholesome guava milk shakes that you get in Hawaii. Just imagine Starbucks meets Hawaii and the result is this corner smoothie stand that serves all these wild shakes. Make mine, "drink no. 7". When I am hot and thirsty...who cares what the drink is called....make the drink...make it cold...make it good...and I am sure it's gonna be good. When I am in ninety degree heat like we were this last weekend, I would love a cold frosty drink called 'Hanajima' and it would be darn good, I am sure.

OK, this is a garden site and I blab on...probably because I am hungry and thirsty....my apologies.

Onto the photo: This photo was shot in the backyard last night. It is a rare landscape (longer width) rather than portrait (longer height). So it looks tiny. Sorry. I always try for long vertical compositions so you can see a bigger and better version...but I could not squeeze this into a portrait without serious cropping. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

50mm at 1/100 shutter and f-stop 7.3, ISO 200 on a tripod with cable release. Some background petals and leaf spots were cloned to delete anything that I thought might be a distraction.

You can see a larger version of this photo without any cloning.

Go here

Two photos were developed from the same raw photograph of Heuchera 'Plum Pudding'. The heuchera munched by a mysterious midnight snacker was scarred by jagged leaf edges or tooth marks. It looked awful. In my opinion, the photo was ruined.

To the rescue: cloning tool! Cloning tool in the hands of a skilled artist can salvage the worst images. Surely you have seen the example of Katie Curic's weight loss photos. Or samples on You Tube of the plain portrait of a young woman made to look like a 10. In the past I have used cloning to rid the sky of jet trails, telephone wires, poles, and other distractions. It also comes in handy to clear up mold spots, discolored leaves, and fill gaps in garden photos. How far I take it, fake it, is dependent on patience and skill.

Is it right? Photo ethics. ....hmmm...

This last shot is of a simple violet. They show up in the most odd places....a crack in the sidewalk or in the middle of another plant's space. They remind me of the pennies that you find on the city street. Yeah, they are noticed. But not worth much and not bothersome enough to reach down and either pull it out or take more time to admire. In this case, I stopped and thought if the dof was just right, then this could be a good photo.

Squirrels are cool forest creatures. Flying squirrels are the best.

Just imagine jumping off a tall tree and swooshing through the branches. You spot the next tree trunk or spreading branch for a landing. Adjust your tail rudder....pull up...pull up... and smack! Slap and grab the bark with all the might of your claws, hang on ... and nurse that stomach punch. ..uhggh....Those guys are nuts! This is a non-flying squirrel. But he often entertains me hopping from limb to limb performing death leaps with ease.

I admire their acrobatics and fiesty determination to climb bird feeders for a few seeds. This day he and a buddy had found some discarded seeds that birds had missed. Birds get sloppy. Squirrels become a clean-up crew. Good deal. I don't want to see mice or rats. That's why I also welcome a cat or two lurking around. Nature's balance. Kill and eat.

The same rose is shown in two different presentations. Its backside was more attractive than the front. Both photos were slightly photoshopped to smooth and blur selected portions. With a familiar object like the rose, you can apply many distortions and people will still recognize the flower. I didn't stretch it too far from reality, only to smudge parts of it.

Lastly, I hope there are those of you who like geranium photos. My camera does. Seems that I cannot walk outside without at least one setup to shoot a geranium.

Our garden is fast becoming a tightly entangled nest of plants along with the bugs, slugs, and birds that call it home. Actually, it is getting hard to step around without crushing something.

Plants and mini-life forms get jumpy when they see me coming. I lumber outside with camera dangling from my neck and tripod in hand. It is the end of the day, and I am not too keen on my feet. Slugs scurry for cover as my size 14 shoe appears crashing down from above. I can squash an entire slug-town in one well placed clomp. However, as I age, my declining balance keeps them from ever knowing where the next death pound will be.

Meanwhile flowers sparkle and are vying for attention, elbowing each other hoping to get their 15 minutes of fame. They hog the lens like eager school-children.

So where do I start? The first is a calla lily I shot last weekend. The s-curve of this kept grabbing my attention. Reviewing photos on the computer screen can be tedious. Because I shoot in raw, I often discard photos based only on the thumbnail size. It takes too long to load a raw photo to full size. This shot looked good even as a small thumbnail. After posting this one on photosig.com and receiving some favorable comments, I was prompted to share it here, too. Hope you enjoy it.

As you can see I experimented with the frame by highlighting corners. This was done with Adobe Photoshop CS3. There is so...so much to learn and apply in this version of Adobe photoshop. I've got a ferrari parked in the driveway and all I do is use it to drive across the street to get the mail. ...sheez...

Next is a shot of Spirea japonica 'Magic Carpet' with supporting credits to Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and Heuchera 'Plum Pudding'.

Here is Silene var. rob. 'Rolly's Favorite' with the buds from our Snowbell tree dropping in from above.