Home is Beautiful!

Woodland Hills, Utah

There is beauty everywhere!  I sometimes forget there is beauty close to home, not just in faraway places.  When life gets too busy, I forget to look for it, but when I do, often something beautiful jumps right out at me, even in a vacant lot next to the road.  I hope you look for something beautiful during your travels today!

About this photo:  no, a new type of large Utah sunflower is not in bloom! These wildflowers are a little bit bigger than an Oreo cookie on a plant that is about a foot tall. And no, there was no Photoshop trickery involved in this image. Unique and different compositions can be created by choosing the right scene, the right lens, the right camera settings and the right perspective or point of view. Here I used a wide angle lens, a small aperture (f/20), placed my camera just a few inches away from the flowers and focused about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way into the scene.  I was in a hurry because behind me were black rain clouds that were moving quickly and dumped just minutes after I took this shot. If I had had more time, and wanted a technically better image, (sharper), I would have put my camera on a tripod, taken numerous shots using different focal points from foreground to background, then combined them in PS or another software program. (For you Utah County photographers, I recently posted a similar shot that I had taken several years ago, and said it was taken in the Elk Ridge area. I went back to find this place again, and it is on the main road into Woodland Hills and the flowers are blooming right now.)