Owl Love

I love all birds, especially owls! I've captured a great pic of a Barred Owl in the creek behind my house.

My daughter, who was about 11 years old at the time, came running into the house yelling that there was an owl in the creek. I'm like "yeah, right". She insisted, and I grabbed my camera, just in case and he just sat and watched me while I took his picture, and I took many!  That was when I fell in love with owls.  I can still hear them outside my bedroom at night and I love the sound!


On Facebook, I belong to Cincinnati Birders.  People began posting sightings of a Snowy Owl, in Cincinnati of all places!!!  I kept an eye out and one Sunday morning I had my gear all ready and when someone posted a sighting, I was ready to go!  He wasn't hard to find, there were about 40-50 photographers on the side of the road, the owl paparazzi and I joined in!

Bless his heart, he was perched atop a highway sound barrier off of I75.  Most of the photographers kept a respectful distance, so he wouldn't fly into traffic.  I got a few good pics, but I really don't have a long lens to get close. These were taken with my 70-300mm lens and then I had to crop!   The very sad news is that my dream bird was hit by a car and killed on the expressway the very next day.  A local raptor rescue group did a necropsy and said that it was indeed a male and he was well fed.

 I think the next bird I will seek is an Eagle. There have been a sighting of one in the Loveland, Ohio area and several in surrounding areas, so chances are good!

To order prints of these owls, please visit my website at www.teachmidphotography.com

Snow Days

I love to photography birds on snowy days!  The weatherman had forecasted snow, but you never know! I went out the night before and filled up my bird feeder and put out suet.

Had some strange bedfellows, a yellow bellied woodpecker feeding with a Starling, a cardinal and a fox sparrow, two Cardinals and a little Finch,

Some shared nicely, some fought. Either way, it was a bird nerd's heaven!

My favorite bird to photograph in the snow, besides an owl, is the cardinal. Both male and female are so beautiful with a snowy background.

 I had more Cardinals at my feeder than I have ever had! The Blue Jay was great to see too!

If you'd like to buy prints of any of these photos, please visit http://www.teaschmidphotography.com/Fine-Art/Birds/i-h2HNFc5

Fishin' Jimmy

Last week I decided that I wanted to get a really good summer themed photo of Jimmy. I took him to a nearby church that has a pond with a dock.

With his ADHD and ASD, I knew he wouldn't pose and I'm not really into posed photos anymore anyway. I tied a string to a stick and let him play. For the above photo I was going for a vintage look. This I'm going to enter into the Rock The Shot photo challenge www.rocktheshotforum.com

Here's the color version. He had a lot of fun and now wants to go fishing with a real pole and catch some fish! Now I need some fun summer pics of my teenage daughter!

www.rocktheshotforum.com

Yellow Springs, Ohio

Took the kids for a two day vacation to Yellow Springs, Ohio...a fun little hippie town north of here. They have a great dairy farm with lots of fun things for kids to do!

 This purple cone flower, at a city building in Yellow Springs, Ohio was edited with Kim Klassens' Follow

Fun in the Woods

I was lucky enough to be commissioned to take photos of Melina and her Cousin Alison on Melina's birthday. They wanted a wooded setting, and told me I could have fun with the photos, and I am having fun with the photos!!!

 I've added fire and wings....

a wolf, fox and butterfly.....

 The fog is from smoke emitters I had with me.....

 The girls were so lovely and fun to work with.....

and a happy birthday to Melina!

Catching Fire

This is my entry for www.rocktheshotforum.com monthly contest....Favorite picture from last year. I titled this "Catching Fire" My daughter had no idea why I asked her to hold her hand up while taking pictures. Then she saw and liked it!

I am quite behind on blogging as at the end of September I had to have two stents placed in my heart and then a few days before Christmas I had a stroke (at the ripe old age of 49).  I'm feeling much better and getting back into the swing of things!

The Wild Bunch

I was trying so hard to get a serene and peaceful Fall photo of my kids, with leaves gently floating around them. This was as close as I could get! It was still a keeper. I'm also entering this into the Rock the Shot monthly challenge at www.rocktheshotforum.com

The Announcement Shoot

A couple of weeks ago I had the honor of photographing my friend Christine and her beautiful family with a soon to be 4th.

Christine chose Rowe Woods, Cincinnati Nature Center as the setting and it was so beautiful with all the fall colors! The kids were adorable as always. The new addition will be lucky to have such great older brothers and sister, and great parents...of course!

Railway Museum of Greater Cincinnati and a little HDR Fun

Had so much fun going to the Railway Museum of Greater Cincinnati, which by the way, is in Latonia, Kentucky. I went with the camera club I belong to, Misfits With Cameras on June 8, 2013. In the afternoon, it did get kind of warm, especially going inside some of the old trains. In this post I'm just sharing some of the HDR photos I created from what I took that day. In the next post I'll show more inside photos of the vintage cars.

This photograph, was the first one I did in HDR, just for fun

 and I added the sky overlay.

BEFORE

AFTER

I felt like the above photo on the right  needed something more, to make it a little more interesting, plus I absolutely love Photoshop! I love to play with photos, to take them and make something more out of them. The clouds and sunset is an overlay from Jessica Drossin Textures. If you haven't checked out her work yet, I suggest you do. It's amazing.

This is a Pennsylvania Railroad Engine. Did more of a painted look on this one.

 All in all it was a fun and interesting day. The next post will have pics of the inside of the old train cars and they won't be HDR. I just had to have a little fun with them .

Prints will be on sale soon in my Etsy Shop. They are printed on metallic paper which really brings out the color!

Impossible

This was taken last spring, early spring. My neighbor's tree was in full bloom and beautiful. I'm posting this for Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday for January 29th. She has a lovely blog, you should really check it out. For this Tuesday, the requirement was one layer of last week's texture -43. On this one I used Kim's texture Sweet Tart, blurred and applied as soft light @ 25%,  then I applied -43 in the multiply mode at 50%. After all was said and done, I used Kim's brush, a lovely quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Dust In The Wind

This photo was taken in March of 2012. I had gone to take photos of a condo for a realtor friend of mine and in the middle of all the condos was a horse farm. So having camera in hand I got out to take pictures and this guy just stopped and stared.
I am entering this into the Rock The Shot Photo Challenge for January, the theme of which is your favorite photo of 2012. My husband really likes this one, so that made it a winner for me!

New love of Waterfalls

Back in October I did a Waterfall Workshop conducted by Bill Fultz of Fultz Photos and Misfits With Cameras. We went to Dayton, to visit various falls. I never knew Dayton, Ohio had sooooo many falls! It was amazing!

Bill gave us great tips on how to shoot the waterfalls and get that silky look that he has on his awesome photos, some of which can be seen here http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamfultz/4671705797/in/set-72157619297373158!

West Milton Falls was the best! When we pulled into a parking lot behind, if I remember correctly, a funeral home, we could immediately hear the Falls! Took some steps down and there they were! The first three photos here are West Milton Falls!

The photo at the bottom, which I think I could have done better on, is directly under an overpass! I wonder how many people drive over it every day and not even realize it's there! I will be in search of more waterfalls to shoot, I have a few to post from
Sharon Woods on a later blog!
Soon the first three photos will
be available in my Etsy Shop or you can
email me at teaschmidphoto@gmail.com

Falls under an over pass in Dayton, Ohio

Orange!

Kim Klassen's challenge this week was the color orange with any of her textures. I LOVE the color orange, but I didn't have any pretty flowers to post, but I did have this girl, a Malaysian Tiger, at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. It was feeding time and her cubs came out and were running around her. I think the snarl was a warning to the visitors to stay away from her babies! Here I used stampedsoftly multiply 100% and kk_crackerjack also multiply 100%.

She Picked Us!

This is one of our two dogs, Muffin. We found her at the pound approximately 8 years ago. When we walked in, all the other dogs were jumping and barking and trying to get our attention. Poor Muffin was cowering in the back of her cage. You could tell she had recently had pups. They spayed her and put her in the cage with no blanket to lay on. When they took her out of her cage for us to visit with, my daughter, who was 5 at the time sat on the floor in Muffin laid across her lap. So we took her home. She has been a wonderful pet! This black and white of her is my entry for the September Rock The Shot Photo Challenge.

John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge and Texture Tuesday

 

I took this photo of the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio this past weekend after we left the Cincinnati Bengals practice camp! It was awesome, by the way! More pics of that to come. This is my entry for Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday. On this I used kk_dream-it applied in the soft light blend mode at 80%. Hopefully, if you mouse over you can see the before...if I did it right! I used a Lightroom 3 preset to give my photo that antique look! If you are here via Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday, please provide a link back to your photo in the comments so I can check out your fabulous work too! 

A DAY AT THE RACES AND TEXTURE TUESDAY

Last weekend my husband won the guest announcer spot for horse racing at River Downs. So the whole family went and it was a great chance for me to get some pics of the horses and my kids. Rob did pretty well at announcing the race, something I would never want to try to do!  Jimmy was bummed that he couldn't ride any of the horses, but all in all it was a fun day!

The horses were beautiful, I was set on getting close ups of their faces and I was pleased with what I got!


























My 8 yo son Jimmy, I edited this with Florabella Actions and used Kim Klassen's Distressed Sky, applied as soft light 35%.





My soon to be teenager Sydney, I wasn't sure whether I liked the color or black and white on this one!