Awakening

Today's Picture Spring prompt is "Awakening," where Tracey encourages us to "Capture something that is just waking up with the welcoming warmth of the season and honor it, I see you little one."
This is some Lily of the Valley that is coming up in my garden. I really doctored this one in Picasa, boosting the saturation multiple times, plus a few other modifications. I like the glowing effect that I ended up with.

Pastel palette

Today's Picture Spring prompt is the pastel pallet. Even though we are naturally drawn to bold, bright colors after months of blah colors, Tracey wanted to remind us that muted pastel hues can help to "soothe our senses and calm our souls."

Look in the mirror

Look, it's me again! Today's Picture Spring prompt was "A fresh face," meaning it's self-portrait time. I almost wanted to skip this one since I put up two self-portraits on the first day of the project, but I decided to just go with it. I really prefer, as you may have noticed, to convert my portraits into black and white or sepia - somehow that's much more flattering to skin tone and all that. Maybe I should have stepped outside of my comfort zone and posted in color instead!

Getting grounded

Today's Picture Spring prompt is "Getting grounded."  That's right, take that camera, put it on the ground and press the shutter and see what happens.  (This is our dog Emmett, by the way.  I think he's sticking his tongue out at me.)

Look around

Well, I didn't follow today's Picture Spring prompt, which was "The Sky is the Limit." We were supposed to take a photo of the sky, but it was pretty bland up there today, and I was already taking wildflower photos anyway, so.... here are a few of my favorite photos from today of my favorite "weed," the Dandelion.

Stepping out

Today's Picture Spring prompt involves 30 steps. As in, take 30 steps in any direction from where your camera is sitting and take a picture of what you find.  The idea is that you don't have to travel great distances to get a great image.

My 30 steps landed me in our driveway, where I saw lots of things, but I ended up honing in on our birdbath and the little artful chickadee that sits there 365 days a year, hoping for a friend to join him from time to time. This is cropped from the original size and the saturation was greatly increased to give it a more surreal quality.

Morning ritual

Here's my image to go with yesterday's Picture Spring prompt to photograph a morning ritual. These are items that are part of my morning ritual on the weekends when I count birds for Project Feederwatch during the winter months: binoculars, paper and pen, and DSLR camera.

What items would be in your morning ritual image?